 When it comes to tactical gear for kind of the average civilian person, have we been lied to? Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and today we're going to have a somewhat uncomfortable discussion about tactical gear for the everyday kind of American minute man, the guy who wants to embrace his martial American heritage and what kind of gear you should or shouldn't be buying. If you're anything like me, you've spent time and money acquiring what I kind of call the cool guy, modern, tactical, heavy quotes here, loadout, right? A plate carrier and like a battle belt, usually one of those skinnier battle belts, you know that Velcro's on and off. I have the warrior poet battle belt that does that. I love it, fantastic belt. And you kind of run a rig like that, right? That's kind of your rig. That's a lot, what's very in vogue right now, and that's kind of how people tend to buy kit. Well, I've been thinking a lot about that and I've been thinking, is that the correct setup for kind of serious use thing? For example, just pretend with me, Red Dawn happens tomorrow, okay? And China invades and they drop paratroopers all over the place and they're blowing up the Western seaboard and they're everywhere, and you have to go full Wolverine, okay? Imagine with me here. So at that point, what would be your mission set? What is going to be the most effective way for you to operate in that environment, okay? And I think the answer is not something like plates and battle belt, and you're going to go toe to toe and duke it out. That may happen in some times in some places, but more than likely, the best use for you, that the best way you could be effective as an armed American would be in some kind of, I'm going to call it light infantry kind of role here. I'll explain why I don't really like that term in a minute, but some kind of light infantry type of role. A lot of patrolling, right? A lot of recon, a lot of walking around in the woods or rural areas, a lot of movement, a lot of observation, and being able to pass that on to a larger US military unit or a larger unit who can then engage and do something about it. But chances are you, even if you have 16, 15, 500 buddies, probably aren't going to be going toe to toe on something like that. So what then is the best gear to accomplish your mission? I heard once that mission drives the gear train, and I think that is brilliant, and I think that is really, really smart. The problem with these loadouts that we like to wear, and hey, I love running plates and a helmet and the battle, I mean, I have all that stuff, I love running, I have videos on this channel kind of reviewing my yearly setup of those items, right? Again, I think they're fantastic. However, if mission drives the gear train and the most likely outcome for you is some kind of patrolling, some kind of long duration walking, our plates and that kind of traditional battle rattle, really the most helpful thing for you. And I think the answer is probably no. The first and probably most obvious thing is where are you going to carry water, right? You need lots of water. If you're moving and grooving and it's anywhere above 80 degrees, you're going to consume a lot of water. If you don't believe me, go do a shepherd or a semester at one shepherd and let me know how that goes for you. You're going to be doing, you're going to be drinking a lot of water. So you need to carry water on you. Now you could say, hey Dylan, no problem, I'm just going to slap my, you know, water carrier in the back of my plates and screw you, I got it, I'm good. Well, then we get to the second more, second most obvious or second, maybe, maybe it's even more obvious than the first problem, which is weight. Plates weigh a lot. Even if you're running slick guy, cool, super cool, super light plates, plates weigh a lot. And that's a lot of weight to be carrying when you're doing long distance movements, right? So is that gear really going to fulfill your mission set? Are you letting the mission drive the gear train? Now, let's make a couple caveats here. Listen, the more urban, the more built up an area gets, the more armor I'm putting on. Okay? If you're like, well, Dylan, listen, you know, we're going to be operating in and inside of bombed out New York City after the new kid, and we're going to have to probably don't want to do that because of radiation. But you get my point, you know, and that's going to be my mission set. Okay, all right, you know, then I got a little bit more sympathy for that, right? Like the more built up an area, the more armor I want to wear because the more problems and the more directions we have things coming from. Or, you know, if I'm going to be hitting houses all day long, you better believe I'm going to wear my plates, right? However, in those environments, hopefully I'm going to have some kind of vehicle support. Again, remember, most likely scenario for you is you have no support. You have no resupply. You probably have a couple buddies and that's it. You're probably walking, you don't necessarily have vehicle support here. So, if I had plates and all that stuff, I'd probably have a pack in the vehicle, would have a ton of water in the vehicle, right? And I'd be able to do a little mini resupply from my vehicle, right? However, again, the most likely outcome for you, most likely mission set for you is some kind of patrolling endeavor, right? Some kind of recon observation type of endeavor. And in that case, plates would not behoove you. So, given all of that, I don't think that plates would behoove you in your mission set, in your most likely scenario mission set. I think you would be better prepared for that mission set if you had a set of traditional webbing, right? A battle rattle with some suspenders and a battle belt that you could throw on and off that's going to carry all of your stuff. There's two big advantages here. One is weight. You get to dump the weight of those plates, which is a significant deal. And you're going to feel immediately thankful for that when you're walking several miles. The second thing is, it allows you to better carry sustainment gear. And by that, I mean water and food, right? Maybe like a poncho, maybe a blade, like more field crafty type stuff, so that you basically have on you enough to sustain you for the next 12 hours, maybe more, that you can just have on you all the time so that you can go out and do these long movements. And I think that is really a missing gear piece that we haven't fully grasped in kind of the modern American armed community, if you will. We tend to go for the cool stuff. And I think that part of the problem is that gear market, that gear train, has really been driven by SWAT slash, you know, special forces guys for the last, I don't know, decade, two decades. And I get it. You know, again, if I got to fast-drop into something and I just was going to be hitting houses and doing direct action missions, yes, I want plates, okay? But again, your mission set probably isn't going to be that. It's probably going to be something long and slow because you would be an irregular at that point. You'd be a gorilla, right? You would not be a front line troop. And America does a very good job with heavy infantry. America doesn't really do light infantry. We load our guys down with gear and tech and firepower and armor. And we just go in and duke it out. And we're very good at that. But as your job, that's probably not going to be what you'll end up doing. And like I've said, this whole video, mission drives the gear train. So we want to adapt our gear to the most likely scenario for the mission. It doesn't mean you shouldn't own plates. It doesn't mean you should throw your plates away. It doesn't mean you should sell them. Hold on to them. Just also be prepared for your most likely scenario. I am going to go through this in a later video, but this is basically something that I'm talking about, right? I have a battle belt here with mags and sustaining pouches. I have a place for my pistol over here. And then I run this whole thing on some kind of suspenders, right? I can put a water bladder in here and I can run this whole rig. This is absolutely a lighter solution than plates. Even with water in there, I am still saving weight over, like I said, the traditional tactical loadout with the plates and the mags and the battle belt and all that stuff. And on that, I might not even take the pistol and the pistol mags, in which case I'm saving more weight. I'm going to do a couple videos on kind of modern Minuteman gear and what that means, because I think that this is a hole that we have been missing. I've read some John Poole up to this point and he just harps and harps and harps and lied infantry. And I did a semester at one shepherd recently. And between those two experiences and just thinking about this a lot, I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to shift my main gear loadout towards something that's more traditional light infantry. Now, I don't like the term light infantry because, again, I'm partial to the John Poole side of things where light infantry means like absolute bare minimum. This is not absolute bare minimum. This is like what I call like medium infantry, okay? Because I can sustain myself for like 12 plus hours, which is an awesome ability to carry on you. When I think of light infantry, I think like some of like the Viet Cong who like snuck into American bases with no gun, right? Just a satchel of explosives and they'd sneak in there and they'd blow something up and they'd just leave like no gun, no water, no nothing. That's kind of what I kind of think of as light infantry, you know, or just like a guy in a mag and a gun and maybe a reload and that's like it. That kind of light infantry stuff, but different video, different topic, whatever we can argue about it later. Like I said, I want to shift to this more kind of American. We're just going to call it light infantry for sake of our discussion. Light infantry stuff because I think that's probably my most likely scenario for defending my area is some kind of light infantry patrolling. So yes, that means you're going to need to learn patrol tactics and stuff like that. I feel like I have no idea what that is. I don't know what patrolling even means doing. Well, there's some reading, there's some videos, there's a lot of stuff on that, but basically that breaks down to like tactical walking. That's really what patrolling is and then you do things like raids and ambushes and recon and stuff like that. That's kind of patrolling, right? So this is my food for thought. I would evaluate your kit. I would evaluate what you think your most likely mission set would be as an armed American and what that's going to play out and if your gear is really going to support that mission. If you needed to go out for the next 12 hours or 24 or 72 or you don't know how long, do you have enough, do you have the right kind of gear setup to be able to accomplish that mission? Or you're going to be like, man, I'm going to throw my plates on, I'm going to get my battle belt on, I'm ready to go. And then like four hours later, you're like, man, I'm thirsty. Like I want some water. Like what are you going to do about that? How are you going to like sustain that? How are you going to make that work for you? So, you know, traditionally in history, a lot of casualties don't come from actually shooting, right? They come from people getting sick or people getting dysentery or people getting trench foot or whatever. Like all these other problems can kill you, get him too cold, right? Think of all the people who froze to death in Stalingrad. Like there's thousands of soldiers on both sides, mostly the Germans, because they didn't have winter gear, that froze to death. Didn't even get to really do any fighting, right? So how do you prevent yourself from becoming a casualty and all these other ways that you can become a casualty, just because you're dehydrated and you just get heat stroke and you're just, you're out of the fight. You didn't even do anything. You just been humping around your plates and your rifle. And again, not saying plates and rifles are bad, keep those and the more built up the area gets, you better believe I'm throwing them on. If you're like Dylan, we're going to go do some vehicle operations. I'm bringing my plates, okay? But I think that most likely for most of us, the mission set we're going to have is something that's more related to this than it is related to plates. Think about it, leave a comment. At the risk of repeating myself, I want to do a video series here to try to fill this hole, fill this gap in knowledge and understanding about the gear we're doing, the mission we're preparing for and how we're really thinking about that. I hope it's helpful. Do brave deeds, end in door.