Ah, the joys of legacy gear. Back in The Day™, and by BITD I mean the mid to late ’80’s, your milsurp gear came in one color – OD – and your attachment system was ALICE. Fastex buckles, MOLLE webbing, and MultiCam were still unknown and not quite ready for prime time. As a result, some of the longer-in-the-tooth survivalists like yours truly tend to have quite a bit of legacy gear laying around.
I mention it because I was trying (and failing) to clean up the mountain of ballistic nylon that is sitting next to my desk. In it was this wonderful little pack from SpecOps. (And, yes, it’s quite overpriced on Amazon.) It’s basically a modernized version of the medium ALICE pack. The medium ALICE pack was capable of being used with or without the frame. (The large ALICE pack, on the other hand, must be used with a frame.) I picked thse packs up years ago on closeout, I believe, so I got a fairly decent deal on them. They were purchased with the notion these would be the packs to keep in the vehicle ‘just in case’.
While the ALICE packs had a lot of flaws, most notably being wildly uncomfortable, their low price and universal availability made them a good choice for tucking a pack away somewhere and not caring what happened to it. The SpecOps bag having compatability with the older ALICE frame was a nice feature for guys who have a buncha old ALICE packs and frames laying around.
As an aside, one of the things I love about the ALICE pack is its ability to be used, with the shelf attachment, to haul jerry cans and ammo crates. Do not underestimate how handy that can be. Would you rather carry 5-gallons of gas by can handle for a mile, or would you rather have it on your back leaving your hands free?
SpecOps isn’t the first outfit to modernize/upgrade the ALICE platform. The guys at Tactical Tailor had their Malice pack for quite a few years. But, ALICE gear has faded into the past and is actually getting a little harder to find as it is awash in the mountains of surplus MOLLE/PALS gear from the last twenty years of military activities.
The new MOLLE packs are, from what I am told, quite the improvement although early generations suffered from frames that tended to be a bit brittle. Being someone who loves gear, I wound up picking one up from the folks at Old Grouch Surplus a few years back. The nice thing about the MOLLE pack is it has a separate internal compartment that holds the military sleep system, which make this a good pack for throwing in the vehicle in the winter when you want to have all that I-guess-Im-gonna-be-here-a-while gear in one place.
By the by, I don’t know if SpecOps is still a going concern or what. Their various social media outlets havent been updated in years, and the selection on their website keeps dwindling. I hope they get some new blood and start putting out more products…I’ve been rather pleased with their offerings.
Anyway, I was putting those packs away and thought it was worth a post.
How ironic. We just moved and my new “man cave” was load with boxes and totes and other gear to the point I could hardly move around inside it. So I spent the last couple days organizing the cave. My son come down and I showed him the duffle bag full of old ALICE gear, all in like new condition that I put away for him when he was just a baby. But he was looking up at all the Molle gear hanging up and I could tell he would have much rather me put away some Molle gear for him. I have to admit I much prefer the Molle gear over the 1950 designed web gear
I have one of those in black. At less than 100 on blowout sale, I had to have it. I had it as an emergency gear pack in my every day driver for a while but decided to go with something a little less GI Joe looking in case I actually needed to do some walking with it and didn’t want to look like a freak. Now, it sits in the garage waiting for it’s next mission. Seems well made, FWIW.
On the SpecOps thing, I’m with you, I’m concerned they are a dying company. Too bad. I’ve used one of their large messenger bags for my ‘work s*&t’ bag for the last 5 years and, despite regularly overstuffing it and generally treating it like crap it looks almost new still, the stiching is perfect, it looks like it may outlive my career at this point and go on to be my ‘retired guy s*&t’ bag some day. It’s too bad they don’t sell that one any more, it is a winner.
I use the messenger bag for my school stuff. They used to make a buttpack (or as we sometimes call them, musette bag) that was bombproof. Still have three or four and they are the best small bag I’ve ever had.
All of my first issued set of packs, field gear, and web gear were WWII and Korean War vintage heavy duck and canvas… Say what you will about it but it was tough stuff… I’ve rucked many a mile with the old ALICE stuff and still remember how you had to turn it around and throw it over your shoulders to get it on when you really had it packed.. When you were packed for a three day jump in exercise with the Eighty Deuce that damned thing weighed about 120 pounds not including your LCE…
Regards
“As an aside, one of the things I love about the ALICE pack is its ability to be used, with the shelf attachment, to haul jerry cans and ammo crates. Do not underestimate how handy that can be. Would you rather carry 5-gallons of gas by can handle for a mile, or would you rather have it on your back leaving your hands free?”
Tumplines can also be used to carry heavy ass materials as well. Here is a link about them and how they are used the world over.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/tumplines/537306/
Like you, I have a lot of Olde School Alice gear, the web belt is bulky as hell but stout and will chafe any exposed skin (for example, wearing a tank top – won’t make that mistake again !). The ‘Y’ harness – helps carry the load, but my gosh moving about is not fun.
Writing that above about the ‘Y’ harness got me looking around the internet and found an interesting possibllity – pool noodles. Yep, thread a noodle unit at top of shoulder contact with harness.
????
Still have my Medium ALICE Pack I was issued back in ’78. Like it’s owner it’s beat to heck, used hard and a little flaky but still going. 🙂 I used a large ALICE pack for years for my backpacking excursions when I lived in Northern CA. It worked fine. Never had money for anything better. Besides why fix what wasn’t broke?
I do enjoy the new MOLLE setups though. Really versatile.
I have been to the Old Grouch…it is old school with piles of stuff everywhere…the guy was pleasant enough and helpful…I have never been a big SpecOps fan…ATS, TAG, and more recently SOE for me…
I’ve attempted to order online from Old Grouch, no reply other than auto generated email and no one ever picked up the phone when I called to check on the order or replied to my questions via email. They still have my $70 and that was 8 months ago.
Was issued the molle gear and its’ near immediate failure(broke,took too long to reconfigure(5 minute warning orders),poor design(had the designers even seen a canteen,radio etc?) allowed me and other”old guys” to use Alice into the 4-5th gen of gear when some of the bugs were worked out.