There’s 3 problems with talking about boots on the internet:

1. Actually forming a genuinely informed opinion on even 1 pair can take ages, let alone the line up from a whole brand and double-let alone multiple brands. By the time you’ve figured out what’s good, they might well have stopped making that model given the market demand for constant newness.
2. To review a boot in-depth is intricate as hell, it’s also hard to define a lot of the qualities in a quantifiable manner and very, very personal. I don’t think it’s the kind of gear you can really talk about ‘just a bit’, you either go right down to brass tacks or do a very basic overview. Hard to be anywhere inbetween.
3. Unlike many other aspects of gear a person might use for a ‘tactical’ purpose, footwear of both military design and from the civilian/hiking type sphere is pretty much all applicable. There are lots of companies making amazing outdoor clothing that don’t offer camo for example, but with boots those aesthetics are irrelevant. This then opens up the range of feasible options available to levels that are almost hard to actually comprehend. The only other item that maybe gets close to approaching this issue is gloves, then maybe backpacks after that and just about everything else like uniform, helmets and load-carriage is far more specific to tactical stuff and the viable choices are made by far fewer companies.

Caveat with number 1 of course would be folks on constant deployments who can actually select their own boots, but then they’re usually pretty busy with more important things than doing detailed gear reviews (talking generally here of course).

What I will say is from my *limited personal experience* LOWA are the brand on top of my list. I’ve got an old-school black leather pair that are at least 9 years old now and have spent dozens of hours up to the ankles in bog and never leaked a drop; though they take looking after. When I know I’ll be doing the rare air force thing of actually slogging through mud and being miserable in the elements, they’re absolutely the pair I reach for. Totally the opposite build to the standard issue lightweight crap that I cut about base in when I’m doing some annual refresher that necessitates MTP instead of blues.

I picked up these Zephyr GTX models from UKTactical on a pretty sweet sale about 18 months ago (my usual delay in the gear posting queue). Now do I recommend gore-tex lined boots in general? Hell no. Should you buy nice bright, tan, suede outer layer boots for use in most of Europe? Also no. But when a very high quality product comes up at a very good price that’s also the time you should have been setting money aside for.

GTX lined shoes can and will overheat and sweat-soak your feet in any weather above ‘quite cool’ but as with anything if you make sure your kit suits your environment you can stay comfortable. So don’t wear these things in the summer. I keep them for pure and exclusive winter time usage unless I’m expecting to get very wet in the spring/autumn. The GORE-TEX® Products liner keeps in a decent amount of heat allowing a comparatively thin and light boot to work well under some physical exertion down to typical UK winter temperatures. Despite the arid climate appearances, I found the lack of any venting or mesh panels as you’d see in an actual arid climate boot to create a pretty good balance overall.

They worked borderline perfectly when paired with some good softshell trousers and moving through a lot of common British countryside terrain. Long wet grass, woodland mud and forest foliage that’s all sodden post-rain or dew; or just permanently wet through December. Far from any sort of environment that poses any real danger to anybody’s survival, but still the sort of terrain I’ve witnessed completely soak the cordura boots and cotton blend trousers other people were wearing. They spent the next 6+ hours being damp and uncomfortable, could’ve been longer had the sun not put on a strong appearance. And why did they have to do that? Because they wore all the same gear they do in the summer months and *maybe* brought a Goretex jacket, totally ignoring the kinda-shitty inbetweens that are the actual reality a lot of the time in a lot of temperate countries.

While that sort of thing may be far from cool to talk about, it’s honestly what I think most people should be equipping for most of the time, certainly in the hobby arena. Like how often do civilians need a tourniquet vs how often do you see people pushing blow-out kits with chest seals on social media? It 100% makes sense to prepare for the worst no doubt but when I build a FAK I put in gel for small burns, plasters, tweezers etc THEN I think about maybe a compact TQ and some bigger bandages. How often have most people in their daily lives encountered an injury that’s just annoying vs one that’s really life threatening? I’m going to wager the ratio is in the region of 100000 to 1, so yes prepare for both to some extent, but definitely make sure you’re ready to deal with the niggling little things and not just the Hollywood moments.

Appreciate that seems like a real tangent, but it’s a good analogy to my mind. These boots have served me well for the bad end of the spectrum of weather that doesn’t require more niche or specific survival gear. This particular model is very light, flexible out of the box, comfortably lined inside and most importantly built to the quality I’ve come to expect from LOWA. I’ve seen the soles come away from tons of other boots, I’ve seen inadequately thin synthetic materials wear through and fail under minimal usage, I’ve seen laces snap far too quickly and eyelets pop far too easily. Not with this brand. Good shoes are crucial. A rip in a shirt? You’ll carry on pretty much just like before, not the case if your boots totally fail you.

I’m happy to say the wait is finally over and the 2nd half of my article on uniform basics is now available on ITS Tactical.

Seeking Uniformity: Differences in Battle Dress, Field Cut and Combat Cut Uniform Bottoms

As with part one, the basic idea is to go over archetypal features on 3 styles of tactical type apparel in order to hopefully aid folks in their purchasing decisions. In this instance, having already covered shirts, I’ve gone over the old school military issued trouser, the modern commercial field cut and the ever popular combat cut. Of course there are hundreds of different brands and designs out there to choose from so I did have to generalise quite a bit, but the overall goal is that having read both parts of the piece you should be able to identify what you’d need and then go out there to the gear stores and classifieds sites and pick the right thing for you.

If I can recommend an item of equipment that’ll make your life that little bit more comfortable when you’re trudging through some woodland in October, it’s kinda cold, drizzling and just generally “a bit shit” then I’d recommend softshell trousers. The same thing of course also applies for proper heavy rain, even lower temperatures, snow, pushing through tall grass that’s soaked in morning dew etc.

I’ll let the pictures here do the talking in terms of the features you expect find on an issue set of PCU L5 lowers, I’d much rather extol the virtues of the item than describe the details. Any questions you have an of course go in the comments as per. Sufficed to say they’re built somewhat like an over-trouser in some areas but still absolutely 100% functional without another layer underneath. Though that insulation option is there with some Level 1 or 2s closer to the skin when all the water around starts turning solid.

I had such a good experience when I took my Beyond Clothing L5 trousers (which are an earlier block in the Alpha Green) through a weekend game run by Warzone Battle Simulation, that it became abundantly clear these things were the way forward in non-summer type conditions. Whether you’re deployed, on an exercise for days/weeks or playing BB wars for a couple of days, the key parts of your uniform should keep the wind out, the sun off your skin, resist some rain and most importantly of all dry out quickly when they inevitably get wet. If anyone reading this hasn’t spent time wearing damp trousers because they only brought/wore their gore-tex garment for the upper body I’d be truly amazed. Wet clothing in general sucks a big one, it’s bad for your skin and hygiene over extended periods, clings to you when you want to move, weighs a ton with the water absorbed, hampers using the actual pockets and the list goes on. Softshell does absolutely all the things that matter so much better than your regular PyCo or NyCo trousers it’s not even funny.

Problem is of course the fashionable thing to do is wear the same combat pants in literally any and all weather then maybe put on a softshell jacket if the clouds roll in and the mercury drops a tad. I get the mindset entirely, I’ve been there, we all concern ourselves with our torso because the brain cares far more about the vital organs than our legs. A lot of folks really would be well served by changing their mind set in this regard however and I know this isn’t my first time banging this particular drum, but bang it again I shall and I’ll do it again in future.

The problems I see outside of the fashion issue (which actually applies to those serving just as much as those having fun) is two fold. Primarily there’s a huge lack of reasonable options on the commercial market, unlike cotton-blend uniforms. The lack of demand means lack of supply and there’s a lot of mid range companies who only seem to offer softshell jackets with no lower halves in production. Or if they do produce them, shops can’t or won’t stock them. That said, in the US at least, the SF issued PCU L5 pants go for a small fraction of the jackets on eBay, also Big Army issuing a softshell layer as parts of ECWCS means there’s an actual f*ck ton of product out there. In multicam that is.

Problem again though is that for people who buy their own stuff there’s a lot of social media ‘influencers’ who rarely seem to mention the genuinely all-up most economical option like mil surp uniforms, because they’re too busy bigging up whatever 5.11 or LBX released just now. Those aren’t bad brands per se for airsoft or recreational shooters, but I don’t think enough people are sufficiently suspicious of folks who get stuff to ‘review’ things. Hell be suspicious of me if you want, I always say when I get free stuff to talk about and if you think I’m being way too positive about an item feel free to disregard my opinion, go find other articles/videos and form an aggregate conclusion of your own, I’ll never discourage it. This is yet another reason I think ITS Tactical is one of the few highly popular outlets that’s specific to gear and really worth paying attention to; Bryan over there could have sponsorships and discount codes pouring out his ears if he liked yet I’ve lost count the number of times on Gear Tasting he’s said to get on eBay or groups/forums for surplus kit. Exactly the same thing I always have and will continue to recommend.

Despite really not being particularly numerous in private hands, I got these Patagonia AOR2 lowers brand new in the ever popular medium-reg for an awful lot less than Crye All-Weather Field pants (pre price jump), just because the aforementioned demand isn’t really there. Granted they’ve got a few less pockets than the Cryes or other offerings from Beyond. Their biggest downfall for me is having articulated knees that totally lack a pocket to insert a knee pad and those are probably the kinds of things that cause people to stick to their NYCO Crye-type trousers. But standalone kneepads are still a thing one can buy and did you ever actually fill up all the pockets on a set of G3 trousers? I’ve never even got close. Even in work when I’ve got multiple key sets, multiple phones, notepad and gloves, plus my usual everyday things, issue PCS trousers do me fine capacity wise.

The first time I went to SHOT I swung by the VERTX booth and was shown their 37.5 combat shirts that weave some kind of fibre taken from coconuts in to the torso fabric. Now of course I was a tad sceptical about this at first, but the guy there made some strong claims in terms of their material having better antimicrobial properties than even silver does. Being a person who likes to hold off the underarm sweat stank as long as possible when I’m not in a position to shower for a few consecutive days, I picked up one of the last Recon combat shirts they had in Highlander to test out the claims.

Unfortunately I can’t report back on that just yet as I’ve been trying out other gear, but wearing this shirt and running around with gear on in some heat is high on my list. I’ll be breaking one of my own strict rules and getting it sweaty then stuffing it in a plastic bag for 24 hours to see just how well the fibres keep the bacteria growth at bay. As with anything I try out I’ll be reporting on the findings of course.

Here’s another AOR shirt from the earlier days of the US using the patterns, this time from Beyond Clothing.

It’s a fairly simple construction in most aspects, just the 4 pockets, nothing to see on the back and only buttons for closures. The stand-out weird feature is that literally the entire thing is made of a stretch fabric, vaguely akin to the nylon/spandex mixture used in the stretch panels on Crye G3 combat, but slightly lighter and with even more elasticity. It’s a very odd feeling garment to hold and wear, it doesn’t hold it’s shape at all, like the opposite of a tailored suit. If you just hold it loosely it’ll slide over itself right out of your hand, like a slinky going down stairs.

The Tru-Spec 1/4 Zip combat shirt in NYCO, if you missed my video look, check it out:

I specifically bought this just to post about because I spent a long time digging through dozens of different combat shirts within the realm of commercial options and this came out right near the top of what I could see online.

I’ve recommended military surplus gear for a long time in terms of the utmost cost effective camo clothing, but colour options are fairly limited if you want to get the best price. It will usually be 1 temperate and 1 arid pattern that’s available cheaply and in large quantities in any given country. The US is a bit difference because of MARPAT and all the bad decisions like UCP and NWU1, but in the UK for example the options would be DPM, DDPM and MTP. They’re fine of course and will cost as little as a third of the price of a good commercial equivalent, but if you want more selection (i.e. stuff that’s never been standard issue) while retaining a decent quality, there’s very few ways around shelling out a bit more cash.

The Tru-Spec was certainly the best option for a combat shirt using good Nylon/Cotton fabrics I came across. They offer the Polyester/Cotton version too but it really wasn’t much cheaper at all, definitely not enough to make up for the loss in resilience and colour fastness you experience with PYCO.

The one thing I can’t commend on is the long term resilience of the torso because it did seem thinner than I would like, but the overall simplicity of the cut means it would be a comparatively easy job to stitch in a replacement t-shirt body if the original did wear out on you. Plus of course the original fabric is a real blessing in hot weather.

I have briefly mentioned before about the differences between the AOR Patagonia sets issued (to people who get issued AOR) and the multicam/solid colour sets that can be purchased online if you’ve got the right sort of ID card. I picked up both these pairs of Level 9 trousers within a short time frame so it feels like a good time to mention the comparison.

From what I’ve read, the issued AOR gear is sewn by somewhat less skilled and motivated people by comparison to the sort-of-commercially available apparel. There’s various conjecture out there about prison labour which is entirely a possibility in the US military supply chain, but I have no hard evidence to support any theory either way.

I’ve mentioned in a previous post about the rather less common (compared to Navy Custom) Army Custom cut uniforms in AOR patterns and I very much imagine this will be the only example I ever have to show here.

I’ve absolutely no information on AOR1 vs 2 production in AC cut or indeed field vs combat type, all I have read is that there was a brief period when US Army SF (to include their really sneaky unit) did use AOR patterns around the time SEALs and the like also adopted them. But either way, personally I’m a big fan of the field cut shirts in woodland/temperate patterns, an update on the classic uniforms of the 80s and 90s if you will.

I won’t post a standard shot of my G3 combat lowers in regular Multicam, because everyone’s seen that a million times. Here’s a couple of close ups.

What I would say while I’m on the topic – if you’re going to put the money down for any Crye clothing, I’d strongly recommend you go for something unusual if you can. I’ll admit I do have a lot of original MC, but that’s just because so many good sets have been made in the pattern. I also have far more other stuff than I have standard Multicam.

The Emdom USA/militarymorons.com IAP, or Immediate Access Pouch. Without doubt the best mag pouch design I’ve ever seen that never gained any significant notoriety, which is pretty crazy given what it does and the time it was brought to the market.

It’s difficult to track the timeline of any given piece of equipment since there isn’t exactly a wikipedia or IMDB of tactical gear, but I did manage to dig up that fact that Emdom brought this thing to market at least 8 years ago, if not even earlier than that with prototypes. We may live in a kydex utopia now of brilliant pouches that provide good retention while still allowing instant access, but that was not really the case for the most part when this pouch came to market. The Eagle FB pouches and ESSTAC KYWIs have been around for a while of course, but they never really gained a huge amount of popularity because it takes a long time for the market to adapt to new concepts. One of those concepts being the idea of not having anything going over the mag for no-question retention.