by CollectinSteve Sat Nov 04, 2023 2:20 am
Nice find! These were easily available for a short period of time and then I stopped seeing them.
These were issued from the very early 2000s (late 1990s?) through the early 2010s, from what I can tell. I have pictures from 2003 of soldiers in Kosovo wearing them and later pictures being worn at demonstration events in Belgium. I bought mine in 2004.
This time period was when many nations experimented with this sort of LBV.
Before this the Belgians had the common body armor with loops for securing pouches. Nobody really liked this because it was difficult to get in/out of vehicles as well as not being useful for operations that didn't require body armor (there was a time body armor was optional!). The fixed pouches was "a thing" that many militaries tried and abandoned. What I don't understand is that Belgium already had detachable pouches, so why not just make a vest that accepted them?
Sometime around 2010? Belgium switched over to lighter body armor and a lighter vest (Bear II by NFM). I don't know what they use these days.
Steve
