00:00 I call it a veil or like a micro ghillie and it essentially breaks up the
00:05 triangles of your shoulder line your head there and that the human eye tends
00:08 to pick up. My name's Bombardier Sam I'm with the New Zealand Army with 16
00:12 field regiment as a joint terminal attack controller and this is what I
00:16 take on a 72-hour patrol.
00:19 What we get here is the the modular assault rifle light
00:26 it's just a 5.56 assault rifle we've got an ACOG and then a red dot on the top
00:33 we've got a PEC 15 which is our laser and then we've also got pop-up iron sights.
00:41 What do you have sort of wrapped around it there what's all that green stuff?
00:45 It's just it's just a wrap to sort of break up the shape of the rifle
00:52 essentially if you're operating in close quarters or in close proximity if you
00:58 just had a standard black rifle it would catch the eye and you're more
01:03 likely to get detected essentially. Here we've got the helmet it's got the MBG
01:09 mount it's got a red light IR strobe and then a counterweight for the night
01:15 vision you could wear it all day long it's not too bad you might get a sore
01:19 neck after a wee while but here we've got the battle belt I've got a football
01:25 gameplay kind of thing and I can just quick reference that it's just got
01:29 permanent information and then there well here I got like a like a CAS brief
01:32 so close air support brief and I'll just have there if I needed a reference it or
01:37 sort of fill it out on the run I don't always have the time to pull out a
01:40 notebook and I can just quickly scribble something down on it.
01:44 Standard K-bar knife. A GPS just chuck it on your on your wrist just for a quick
01:50 reference. Individual first aid kit so this is just for me only and then I can
01:57 whoever if I get injured they can just quickly pull it off and get to whatever
02:04 material needs. So I've got a extra tourniquet, I've got Israeli bandage and
02:11 then we got our chest seals so if you get shot in the chest or something like
02:15 that. Obviously like you're not a medic but like you have a lot of first aid
02:19 training right? Yeah we have like upgrade upgrade medical courses so like a combat
02:26 combat lifesavers course so you just get a little bit extra training. So like just
02:31 basic combat medical care? Yeah it's just just a bit more than what you would get
02:35 taught just out of basic training pretty much yeah. Here just got night vision so
02:41 just try and keep that on you the whole time. Ideally not in your bag so if you
02:47 forget it or leave it then you can't operate at night. Now does that attach to
02:52 your helmet? Yep.
02:59 It just attaches like that and then just folds down. And here another extra water
03:07 bottle trying to keep at least a liter on you. More water, a bit of rope and then a
03:18 pruning saw for cutting brush and that kind of thing and that's just tethered
03:21 to me so I don't lose it. Well predominantly we operate in the
03:25 southwest Pacific kind of area so a lot of our operations or previous operations
03:31 are all conducted a lot of the time in the jungle or the bush. Just an extra
03:36 magazine and then a grenade pouch. Just five mags on us and then the extra
03:41 mags will be in an extra bag so like the grab bag or something like that.
03:45 Standard issue body armor. On the front here we've got extra magazines we've got
03:51 our ATAC or essentially we can do all our mapping and all our connectivity off
03:57 this. We can send data missions through radios and that kind of thing like that.
04:02 We've got a push to talk so talking on the radio so we can operate up to four
04:08 different channels on this so talking to lots of different people. Got a
04:18 dump pouch. To my right hand side we've just got different books we can
04:24 reference so this is a like a J-4 or joint fires so this gives us all the
04:29 information that we might need on the run and we can reference it if we need
04:33 to conduct some kind of mission with naval or air or ground. Just an extra
04:40 notebook for CAS briefs and that kind of thing. It's just laminated and then
04:46 we go over it with sandpaper just so we can ride on it in the rain with pencil.
04:50 Just a back panel for extra stuff whatever you might need and then
04:57 radio. No comms, no bombs. Yeah comms are critical you can't do
05:04 anything out. Yeah but isn't it tough in some jungle environments? Yeah for
05:08 sure but we have techniques and tactics and stuff to mitigate that kind of stuff.
05:14 On the left hand side here we've just got a IR pointer. If I wanted to talk to
05:19 like a UAV or a fighter or something that's coming to strike a target I can
05:24 essentially rope them around like this and then lasso them onto whatever is
05:29 striking. Compass. It's got a tritium in it so you can see through night you don't
05:35 actually have to charge it with like an extra light to be able to illuminate the
05:39 illuminators. So this is a special reconnaissance pack that's essentially a 72
05:45 hour loadout. Essentially how the packs configured is, we like to have all our
05:49 equipment on the exterior of the pack so we're not constantly opening the pack
05:53 and digging into the middle of it. On the top of the pack here is our claymore pouch.
05:57 Obviously we put our claymore in there. In conjunction to that we'd have a,
06:03 call it a veil or like a micro ghillie and it essentially breaks up the
06:08 triangles of your shoulder line, your head there, that the human eye tends to
06:12 pick up. This would be utilized when you're in the observation post or
06:17 conducting a close target reconnaissance. To the right here we have a,
06:22 we call it a huchi. A huchi is essentially a TP tarp that we
06:28 utilize in the field to keep the rain off our heads. On the pack itself we like
06:32 to keep all our water located on it so we're not drinking the water from our
06:37 webbing just if we have to go on the run or some sort, we're not drinking all the
06:43 water that's already on us. On the side here we just got wet weather jacket.
06:48 Wet weather jacket and wet weather pants. We try to avoid wearing them as much as
06:57 possible because the rustling and the noise can give away your position. In
07:02 this pouch here we've got a jet boil, gas. What's that for? Just heating up your
07:10 food pretty much, hot brews, coffees, those kind of things. Basically a morale tool
07:16 to keep the morale up. Turns on.
07:21 There's not too many good things in the field so anything that can sort of cheer
07:25 you up. In the front here we have our MREs. What we like to do is we'll break
07:33 them up into three packs essentially. We'll have one that's just full of the
07:39 meat packs, one's just full of like your scroggins, your skittles and that kind of
07:45 thing and then we also have a rubbish bag just keep everything clean and try
07:49 and reduce our sign. What is scrogg? Scroggin is essentially, we basically
07:56 grab all the the nuts and berries and all that kind of stuff and we'll take
08:00 them out of their packaging and we'll chuck them into one bag just to reduce
08:04 all the the rubbish and that kind of thing. It's just easier instead of
08:10 having to break into a new pack every time. Yeah why is it important to be
08:15 accountable for your own trash in the field, your own rubbish in the field?
08:19 Essentially it gives away sign and it can give the trackers or enemy sort of
08:25 bit of a intelligence picture to sort of who's operating in the area. Got our
08:32 thermal mat here and then when we're operating we can just sit behind our pack like so
08:37 and then we have access to everything that's on our pack. So it's just like a
08:42 seat cushion. It's a seat cushion and it keeps you keeps your butt warm. It's just
08:46 been cut and taped back together just so it folds nicely. At the top of the top of
08:52 the pack we have a essentially a grab bag. The grab bag is essentially contained
08:58 of all like mission critical equipment so your radios, any comm sec material,
09:06 optics that you don't want to get into the enemy's hands and essentially we
09:12 have it in the grab bag as just so if we have to go on the run we're not carrying
09:15 a massive pack and it's there good to go. You can see that the the straps on the
09:22 outside just so we can grab it and pull it out. We've got our mission
09:27 essential material so we've got our thermal night optic and our day
09:34 optic. So it's called a GemLR. It's a thermal optic and it also has a
09:40 day TV mode and we can look out super far with these essentially, a lot further
09:46 than your just sort of normal optics. So I'm built into it. There's also a IR
09:52 pointer essentially. It's a laser that's invisible to the naked eye and that can
09:56 only be seen at night with night vision goggles. So if you're if you're marking
10:01 targets or something if you've got guys that are or an aircraft in the overhead
10:05 you can actually laze the target or IR point the target and then he can get
10:11 quickly correlated onto it. And then some warm gears to say if we get cold at
10:17 night. That looks pretty comfortable. Yeah it's good to go. Thermals, jocks, socks
10:22 you probably don't want to look at those. Just pretty standard stuff. What are jocks?
10:27 Jocks, underwear, I think you call them underwear. Yeah. And then we have our
10:35 sleeping bag. So here we've got essentially our sleeping bag set up. It's
10:40 a waterproof liner that stops the bag getting wet. A lot of the time
10:46 we'll just operate with just this and we depending on the tech scenario we won't
10:52 actually deploy the the hoochie itself. And then again we like to order it and
11:00 how we're going to use it so when we're jumping into our bag when we're soaking
11:03 wet we try and avoid that so we'll have dry equipment so we can jump in.
11:10 So take your wet pants off, chuck some dry pants on and that's just a standard
11:15 issue jungle bag. And that's everything I take on a 72 hour mission.
11:19 So is it a Ruck? Yeah Ruck, a pack Ruck. We like to call it a pack so yeah.
11:27 So it's different you don't ever refer to it as a Ruck? If we referred to it as a
11:31 Ruck everyone would know what it is.
11:34 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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