Your fighting loadout is very important to set up right as it is what you will rely on to get through a fight. It should allow maneuverability, weapon manipulations, and be able to facilitate your capabilities in a fight. Ergonomic gear placement, gear scrutiny, and combat conditioning with your fighting load will facilitate your ability to fight effectively.
FIGHTING VS COMBAT LOAD
In the past, I have talked about your ‘combat’ load, but this will be about your fighting load. The difference is that a combat load consists of both your fighting and approach march load. The approach march load will sustain you through the entirety of your combat mission and potentially beyond in a contingency, while a fighting load is specifically the gear you have for fighting. The latter when used alone is lighter and facilitates speed, maneuverability, and combat effectiveness. This is why some people prefer to just use a backpack for things not in the fighting load, such as spare ammo, waterproofing gear, warming layers, extra water, and rations. This is the best way to keep your fighting load exclusive and accessible. In other cases, you can carry extra ammo and sustainment items like rations in the same gear as your fighting load if your mission is short and there is too little in your approach march load to justify carrying a pack.
DEPENDS ON METT-TC
A fighting load that works for one mission does not necessarily work for another. For example, if you are designated for a short recon patrol, your fighting load is going to look different than if you are tasked with performing a raid, ambush or contact patrol. On the latter few missions, you will see the need for more ammo, adding armor, and more water. There are fighting load basics that work universally, but are adjustable in quantity depending on the mission and METT-TC.
FIGHTING LOAD CONTENTS & BALANCE
Your fighting load needs to have sufficient resources to sustain you in a firefight. These items will need to be carried on your person and gear in areas that are easy to reach, but should be balanced according to your loadout needs. For instance, you will need at least 6 extra 5.56 mags or 6 308 mags, but should they all be on your support side for an ergonomic reload, or distributed to balance your load? I personally always try to carry at least 9 5.56 mags and 8 308 mags. The first 4 308/6 5.56 mags goes on my support side while the remainder go on my firing side as a resupply source since I don’t like the idea of going to a pack for more ammo. This is my first consideration when planning my loadout since ammo placement can make or break a reload. I must be able to quickly access my primary mags from all positions and still be able to maintain a low prone position. If I were expecting to go on a contact patrol or seek a fight, I’d put as many mags on my support side as possible in order to lessen the need for transferring ammo from my firing side to my support side.
Water is an important component to your fighting load because continuous movement under load will exponentially increase your fluid expenditure. Some people like to include a camelback on their fighting load, but I like having canteens since they are easy to refill and sanitize in the field if needed. I generally like to have 2 canteens for my fighting load, just in case I run out of water in my first canteen and need to refill it. The second canteen will hold me over for the 4 hours it will take for the purification tabs to work. There is little reason to risk crippling disease on mission if all it costs is 2 extra pounds.
Modern combat medicine has come quite a long way, but that doesn’t necessarily justify us carrying a big hulking IFAK on our gear like the military. Again, it depends on the type of operation you are running and the process you will have in place for casualty treatment and evacuation. On a recon patrol, keep the bulk of your medical gear in/on your pack readily available, but keep a TQ and combat bandage together in each cargo pocket as your hasty med kit. This will allow you to quickly treat extremity wounds, continue to fight and keep moving. If you are on a raid, contact or security patrol, I would say carry the entire IFAK on your gear if you will have a medic or plenty of people to use your IFAK to treat you on site. Also, a light poncho and 550 cord would also help for making hasty carry/stretcher systems with little more than a pound of added weight.
This may cause a bit of controversy, but I think it is worth talking about how/when armor is useful. The military has their troops wearing armor 24/7 in a combat environment, but that doesn’t mean you should follow their religion. It makes little sense to weigh yourself down if the likelihood of contact is low or you are specifically conducting maneuvers at range. If you are expected to be in contact with the enemy such as in a raid, security, or contact patrol, protection can’t hurt too much. The point is to be reasonable about your use of armor and to make sure that it isn’t crossing over into the realm of being a burden if it will only hurt your survivability.
PLACEMENT/ARRANGEMENT
I know that it is cool to assemble a battle belt and carry only a few mags on you while weighing down your plate carrier with crap. You see it on TV so that must mean that it is what you are supposed to do, right? Wrong. The goal is symmetry and most times, this plate carrier fetish does not facilitate symmetrical distribution of weight that is sustainable for hours on end. I am a proponent of keeping the crap off the plate carrier and reverting back to a belt webbing system for dismounted operations. This transfers the weight to the hips and distributes it symmetrically, maximizing torso range of motion and minimizing back strain. Even if I add a plate carrier, it will have little more than a pistol and pistol mags. With the belt webbing system, the mag pouches are to the side, allowing for a lower profile and comfort in the prone while still allowing me to reach my mags without issue. All the gear in your fighting load needs to be accessible to you in an emergency, to include your IFAK. Another consideration is to make sure that your gear has some form of retention and protection so you don’t leave a yard sale behind when you are running, crawling, jumping, etc. This is one of the things I see the most and it is totally avoidable. Being fast at reloading isn't helpful if you drop your spare mags out of your carrier 20 yards back when going into the prone during initial contact.
CONDITIONING & ADAPTATION
When you are setting up your fighting load, you have to consider how much you are loading yourself down with. Your mission will determine how much or how little weight you need to carry. But the important thing to remember is that you must train with your loadout and let your body adapt to working with it. This means wearing your loadout while jogging, sprinting, climbing, crawling, and shifting positions. Make your loadout a part of you and make sure you can maneuver and fight effectively with the weight of your fighting load.
Don't get a sweet load carrying system and think that just having it is good enough. Work with it, train with it, exercise in/with it, and live in it. Get used to the weight and get to know its strengths and weaknesses ahead of time. Get fast in your manipulations and maneuvers, but also spend time critically thinking about your fighting load and whether it is actually suitable for the fight. As time goes on, it is normal to make some changes to your loadout in where things are, but also the quantity of certain items. Just remember that it is a journey, not a destination. Keep advancing and keep working on yourself and your gear.
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