For me, any opportunity to fit some gear viewing in to my schedule is welcome. Now I’ve armed myself with a bit more knowledge I’m not as bad as I used to be, but I’ve lost count the number of times over the years I’ve spent a load of money getting something from overseas only for it to turn out the manufacturer’s website or the gear store’s description was somewhat lacking. A small few companies like Tyr and Crye provide tech spec sheets on their sites, but they are very much the exception. Yet another reason to always look at lots of reviews before making a purchase; even contact the manufacturer if needs be.
Tyr have been around for some time now and while they’re not perhaps the largest name in the industry, I have tried out a few pieces of their equipment and their materials and construction quality is absolutely right up there with anyone else you’d care to mention. They’ve definitely put some innovative products out there over the years and their commercially offered line has expanded greatly in the past 12-18 months.
First thing I’ve shown abive is their hot weather uniform. They offer conventional NYCO uniforms for temperate climes as well as a softshell/cold weather system, but the arid/jungle offering from the Huron line caught my attention with it’s materials and pricing. A few other high-end manufacturers of uniforms have recently come out with their own lines that are specifically designed around jungle/high humidity environments and they’ve changed out the standard 50/50 NYCO for various new fabrics that haven’t really been seen in the field before and offer increased performance in the relevant environments, but the prices have jumped significantly.
The long sleeve Huron hot weather shirt has stayed at basically the same price point as the standard Crye G3 CS despite using a multicam fabric that is far more expensive than NYCO. The short sleeve variant is actually even cheaper than the G3 and I’d imagine Tyr will have a discount option available for service members. The torso fabric is from Polartec, all polyester with a specific construction to transport moisture as fast as is physically possible. You lose the no-melt no-drip, however most of these jungle uniforms do and for those of you looking for high quality gear for any sporting application in warm climates I’d certainly give it a look.
Unfortunately the combat shirt is currently only available in Multicam, whereas the standard shirt is in MC and OD, but after checking it out in person I’m very much hovering over that checkout button regardless of already owning quite a few combat shirts in the same pattern.
I don’t have names on the new chest rig/placard offerings, but check out Soldier Systems Daily for an article on these if you need nomenclature. Last I checked the Tyr website wasn’t listing them, but as you can see you’ve got some heavy built options for plate carrier mounting, especially in the double-triple mag placard with the typical bungee adaptability for various sizes of magazine. Also being supplied with loop-mounted spacer mesh backers it’ll be easy to go from PC mount to clipping in an H Harness and running a light chest rig. I’m gradually transitioning all my gear over to this new system.
In the last image you can see just 2 of the many, many armour carriage system that Tyr offer. I specifically wanted to detail one of their female oriented offerings (left side in the image) since Tyr are very much at the forefront in building armour carriers to fit female personnel. They clearly put a lot of manufacturing time in to altering the shape of the nylon gear and the way in which the plates are carried, as well as the shaping of the plates themselves. Putting any politics aside, females in dismounted close combat roles are here in 2017 and their numbers will only increase, so their need for comfortable, fitting armour is more crucial than ever before. Most standard issue equipment I’ve seen is very lacking in this area so I can’t imagine the discomfort a lot of female personnel have had to endure wearing ill-fitting armour when deployed in hot, arid theatres of operation; it’s good to see a company putting the R&D in to this field.
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