Equipment of a Modern Soldier

Warfare in the 21st century is very different to warfare in the Middle Ages. Back then all you needed was a shield, a spear, a helmet, and some grit. Today things are a little different. We are living in the age of technology where every new invention of war causes armies to adapt and alter their gear in face of the new threat. Things are changing faster than they ever have and soldiers from the previous century already look dissimilar. Let’s have a look at what an elite soldier of our age would have to carry in order to fight.

In the picture above you can see my personal loadout. As commandos, we’d be better equipped than your average soldier. Each group of 12 men would have to be autonomous on the ground. There would be a team leader, a transmitter, a medic, a couple of sharp shooters, a couple of light machine gunners, a few all-arounders as well as data/evidence collectors and in the case of myself and my partner; a couple of combat engineers. We all had a lot of gear.

So as you can guess, any soldier must be equipped with the essentials; a rifle, body armour and a helmet. Then they’re going to need a med kit, spare ammunition, food, water and a bag to put all that in. Once you’ve got all that we get to some more specialist stuff.

We’ll get to that in a moment. Below is a photo of my Heckler & Kock 416.

The H&K 416 is a phenomenal weapon system. H&K is a German weapons manufacturing company and in this case they nailed it. The H&K is based on the old M4 platform with a few upgrades. It has a short-stroke gas piston system that shoots the standard 5.56mm NATO round. It is robust and reliable. On the top rail I have both an Eotech holographic sight and 3X magnifier. Moving down the barrel, on the side you cannot see, I have a torch and facing us is an infa-red laser that couples with my night vision goggles.

In the same picture I also have 2 rifle grenades that are mounted over the barrel and can be shot with a standard round, propelling them much further than I could ever throw them. Finally, I have a smoke grenade, very useful in the event that we would want to make a tactical retreat as it would provide a screen, essentially blocking us from view of an enemy.

This is my trusty sidearm; the Glock 17. There is a good reason special forces units all over the world use this weapon as their secondary. It’s because it shoots. Every time. The Glock 17 fires a 9mm round and is a striker-fired semi-automatic mechanism. It’s a simple design; there is no safety save for a small secondary ‘trigger in the trigger.’ All you have to do is pull it from your holster and shoot. It comes in very useful when you have to clear out buildings and the spaces become too cramped for a rifle.

This is the H&K M320 grenade launcher. It shoots 40mm grenades and can either be fired with a stock or mounted under a barrel. It shoots only one round after the user has to manually reload however it is a very versatile system as there are quite a few types of 40mm rounds that can be used in different situations. These include a standard explosive round, a smoke round, a gas round, an illumination round and a practice round just to name a few. Also, it makes a really cool sound when you shoot it.

This is what plastic explosives look like in the packet. We used many kilos of this stuff during my last deployment. After a firefight we would amass all the enemy weapons and vehicles and destroy them; nothing was left out on the terrain that the enemy could then use and we could only carry so much of it back to the FOB. Blowing shit up is super fun.

This is a compact metal detector that we used to detect mines and I.E.D’s. It’s big and bulky but worth having. You never know what could be hidden under the ground. The sad truth these days however is that many I.E.D’s are made with very few metal parts, sometimes only as much as a nail and are very difficult to detect. In the case of I.E.D’s, your eyes are always your best defence.

Here, you can see a close up of my helmet, night vision goggles and chest rig. The helmet and chest rig of course protect me from small arms fire and are also where I store some of my most crucial pieces of kit. Spare ammunition, a combat knife, a basic med kit and a radio. The radio feeds into my helmet through a cable and allows me to communicate with my team during a mission.

My night vision goggles are by far the most expensive piece of kit I carried; and those were cheap! The most up to date and state of the art systems these days cost upwards of $40,000! It’s well worth it however, because as far as combat at night is concerned, these are an absolute game changer. Being able to see you enemy and engage them without them seeing you is quite obviously an incredible advantage. Fortunately the insurgents in North Africa don’t have the budget for night vision. Not yet anyway. Below is what it’s like to look through the lense.

So there you have it, that covers the major bits. There are a hundred other things I had with me on operation of course and I could talk all day about gear but those are the essentials. There is a part of me that misses feeling the familiar weight of it all resting on my shoulders and back but then I remember the many thousands of hours I spent inside it, hot or cold and tired and hungry. I couldn’t wait to get it off and lie down.

I hope you enjoyed that little window into a modern soldiers gear, maybe I’ll do something more in depth in the future…