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How Much Weight Soldiers Carry, and Incredible POV Footage of a Massive Paratrooper Drop
The amount of gear that they jump with is unbelievable
An old Army saw has it that
The General asks, "What does it do?"
The Senator asks, "How much does it cost?"
The soldier asks, "How much does it weigh?"
Enter a caption (optional)We think of soldiers as warfighters, but for even the most combat-hardened vet, the amount of time spent in firefights is a fraction of the time spent hauling their gear around. And that gear adds up: A soldier on the march might be saddled with an assault rifle, a sidearm, ammunition for both, a knife, smoke grenades, flashbang grenades, rations, water, medical supplies, tools, body armor, a flashlight, communications gear, extra batteries, night vision goggles, et cetera. (Members of crew-served weapons teams, i.e. mortars and machine-gun squads, have it even worse.)
Enter a caption (optional)All told, a soldier might be carrying anywhere from seventy to over 100 pounds of gear. Watch this soldier in Afghanistan step onto a scale while loaded up with "everything I go out with every day:"
What's even crazier is that sometimes soldiers with this amount of gear on are dropped out of airplanes—which can add another 53 pounds to the load. (The U.S. Army's T-11 parachute and harness weighs 38 pounds and the reserve chute adds another 15.) A veteran of the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade based in Vicenza, Italy writes that "Gear weight of a paratrooper…hits up to 160 lbs out the door!"
To give you an idea of what this looks like, check out this footage of members of the 82nd Airborne Division, all wearing the T-11 rigs, jumping out of a C-17 over New Mexico. Be sure to watch for the guy on the far right of the screen around the 55-second mark:
It's strange how amazingly peaceful it looks—on a training mission, anyway—when the guy with a GoPro on his helmet jumps out of the plane.
To give you a more visual idea of where all of that weight comes from, here's footage of a soldier at Washington state's Joint Base Lewis-McChord being kitted out for deployment:
Even more illuminating is this footage shot in the field, in Afghanistan. Here Specialist Craig Brown points out the design features of the initial layer of clothing, then explains the locations and functions of each successive piece of kit he straps on:
Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn't it? I'll never complain about not having a MacBook Air again.
Title Image courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
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Me with 81mm tube, 81mm base plate, 3 rounds in my bag plus radio and FDC equipment, then personal gear, plus plate carrier with basic load out for m4 and m9. Dropped off for 5 mile plus movement. Was not very happy that day.
Jeez Louise! I remember reading that with the U.S. paratrooper mortar teams in WWII, one guy jumped with the tube, another guy jumped with the plate--and that was with a 60mm M2. I'm guessing yours is heavier?
- Rain
That's a Beretta M9 not a bAretta. Concealment has nothing to do with why they chose it either. It's a full-size semiauto handgun and it's far from standard once you get away from the average soldier.
Also, while the weights of other firearms are listed, it's not typical for a soldier to carry the H&K plus an M4 plus a sniper rifle. Often they have one long arm and one sidearm.
In the good old days of mid sixties, in the good ol' Czechoslovakia, we used to jump sideways from some clapped out Russian plane ( Iljushin, I think), and, once out of modern then turbo prop Il 12. Helmets we did no wear, only leather cowls, no body armour and about 25% of body weight in various gear and armaments, plus a radio, only with the operator, but then we had boxes of ammo stuck under our asses. I guess we were meant to live more than fifteen to twenty minutes after discovery. The jumps were fun but the two or so minutes to the ground did not really pay for the slog of many hours afterwards. We were pretty hard mob then, even though serving in National Service. I still have some fond memories of those times.
That was my chalk jumping into New Mexico was definitely the heaviest jump I have ever done!
Chad, are you able to provide a breakdown of what items you jump with, and how much everything weighs? Would be very curious to hear!
- Rain
baffled as to why they don't wear eye protection when jumping out of a plane, even for a training mission
cause they don't stay on your eyes when jumping out of the plane lol.
Some do. Most don't because they don't have the frames w rubber wrap around band that attaches to the frame and because majority of them have their eyes clinched shut as soon as they are out the door.
I hate to disagree with a fellow infantryman on here, as I'm sure we've both carried a considerable amount of gear and weight on our backs, but I can't think of a worse time for anyone to close their eyes. Every time I ever exited an aircraft, I was watching for other jumpers or hazards in the air, trying to orient myself to the terrain below, and trying to figure out where I was going to slam into the ground.
Backpacking goes well over 33% i'd be over 60% for a long hike on a two day trip often go over 33%
Cool video and interesting article. They switch planes before the gopro jump and go out of a C-130. Still cool.