I WAS RECENTLY ON THE PHONE
TO THE ‘BOSS MAN’, AK A PAUL,
WHEN WE STARTED TRADING
STORIES ABOUT ELEMENTS
OF OUR HOBBY THAT REALLY
DO- IN THE WORDS OF PETER
GRIFFIN- GRIND OUR GE ARS.
ALTHOUGH PAUL, HAVING BEEN
INVOLVED IN THE AIRSOF T
WORLD CONSIDERABLY LONGER
THAN I, HAD HIS OWN PET
PEEVES ABOUT THE GAME;
ONE OF MY OWN SEEMED
TO PIQUE HIS INTEREST AS
WE WERE SHOOTING THE
BREEZE WAS MY BORDERLINE-
IRRATIONAL DISTASTE FOR
“MILSIM LOADOUTS” WHICH
CARRY EVERYTHING PLUS THE
KITCHEN SINK.
086 WWW.AI-MAG.COMBeing one of a ‘younger generation’, I’m a lover
of social media- you’ll have seen me write
before about it and how the online Airsoft
community can be. All the time, I see “show us
your MilSim loadouts!” or similar types of posts
in community groups and, while some sets of
kit are clearly thought through and set up well;
there are always others that seem to lump every
additional pouch, accessory, magazine or bit of
nylon ever to roll off a company’s production
line on, in no particular order, to a superlatively
bulky plate carrier and an equally over-crammed
‘belt line’ which would be enough to sink the
Titanic if it were tied around its ballast.
The reasoning behind the decision to run
such an obnoxiously heavy setup, however,
still bewilders me; especially when I see the
poster of the heavyweight “MilSim” setup then
post their skirmish setup which is as little as
3 mags, a grenade and a radio mounted off a
chest rig! Bearing in mind that, at every single
MilSim I’ve been to, I’ve never used more ammo
in a whole weekend than I do in one skirmish
day; let alone enough to justify carrying ten
magazines or more on a single deployment!
Indeed, across the last two Ops I’ve attended,I used 400 rounds in 28 hours at the first,
a ‘Special Forces in hostile territory’ style
operation and less than 50 in 24 hours at the
last, a counter-terrorism themed event.
As many of us will know, MilSim stands for
Military Simulation. The whole concept behind
the “Military Simulation” aspect of these
games is, of course, to replicate to a degree
military action in practice... well, the cool
door kicking and shooting bad guys, that is.
However, surely it would be a logical extension
of this idea of simulating the military to
have a realistically built loadout? In the real
world, the Tier 1 cool guys who we dress up
to replicate don’t carry anything past mission
essentials: just enough ammunition, just
enough water, just enough grenades and just
enough ‘mission specifics’ to get through the
task in hand. This is because carrying, and
being slowed down by; extra weight could
prove to be the difference between life and
death in an engagement with enemy forces.
MilSim operations generally last from 12 to 72
hours and, in my experience, almost all of that
time is spent in full kit waiting on orders and
taskings. However, when that tasking comes,JACOB SHOOTS THE BREEZE AND ADDRESSES LOAD BEARING
OFF MY CHEST!
THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
JACOB PICKS UP THE PEN FOR ANOTHER RANT
ALL TALK
BY JACOB MILLER
086-087 JACOB.indd 86 29/05/2018 12:04