Hi everybody, this is Chuck from PressCheck Training and Consulting. Today, I'd like to talk a little bit about dump pouches, what they're used for, the requirement for dump pouches, and how that drives into your equipment selection, your needs, and why the dump pouch design is important.

First off, I think we kind of conflate a dump pouch as an administrative range admin pocket with the actual need to secure and retain stuff that did not have a dedicated pouch when you went out on a mission. If you're using a dump pouch to retain partially loaded magazines after a tactical reload or something like that, I would probably submit that there are other ways to do that. In my entire time in the Department of Defense, I never once deployed to combat with a dump pouch anywhere on my gear, ever. I still managed to retain magazines or not, because they weren't worth dying over depending on the circumstance.

Primarily, the stuff that you see people put a lot into dump pouches, I use the cargo pockets that are on my gear for. But if a dump pouch is available, why wouldn't you use it? This gets us into a subject that I'm very emotional about, which is snag hazards when worn on your gear. A lot of the conventional dump pouch designs are very rigid at the top because they don't want the pouch to collapse on you, and they want you to be able to reach back and access that dump pouch without having to look and put something into the dump pouch that will remain there while it's in an open position.

The problem with that is that now you have a stiffened loop on the back of your gear. So I've got a war belt here. Guys had to carry extra restraints in a law enforcement environment for riot control, and then they left their kit set up that way when they went back to doing SWAT operations or whatever.

Right here, we have a duty belt that is a chalk belt. Life-saving, tested piece of equipment. I've got a locking carabiner, also a tested and load-rated piece of life-saving equipment, and flexible restraints which are designed by the manufacturer to be nearly unbreakable so that human beings cannot break out of their cuffs. Where is the point of failure anywhere in this chain?

We take this type of snag hazard and incorporate it with handled swivel door knobs, which are now the new construction standard because of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Round doorknobs are going the way of the dodo here in the United States, and in the future, you will see more and more of those horizontal swivel-handled door knobs.

The number of failed breaches that I have personally witnessed during training operations with military and law enforcement organizations, where the number one man rides a door that has a return on it and has to physically push the door open, and has that hook catch on a piece of their equipment, is surprising. What's supposed to give? There’s nothing. There’s nothing here that can give. The only way to get this off is to back up and take it off of the doorknob.

This could also be the opening of a dump pouch. Your dump pouch could get caught on that same doorknob, and now you have the force of the number two, the number three, or whomever is trying to move into that room in a dynamic environment, and they are pushing you further and further away from being able to unhook yourself. This can lead to an absolute breach failure when you're trying to move through the threshold and into the room.

When I did wear restraints professionally in this manner, I used heavy-duty rubber bands, which were girth-hitched to the restraint, and then I would put them on some type of carabiner device. Now, if I need to employ this restraint, I can reach back, grab it, and pull it straight off of the carabiner until it breaks. Then I can deploy my double cuffs in the traditional manner.
So when you see this pet peeve of mine, think about a dump pouch and how it is opened, how it stays open, and whether you have the ability to retain it. If I were to carry some type of dump bag or SSE bag on my gear, the number one requirement that it absolutely has to have is the ability to be stowed when not in use. If I have an operational requirement to have this piece of kit on my gear, I want it to have the minimum snag profile possible when not in active use.

Blue Force Gear has a line of pouches based on your needs. We have the medium dump pouch here, and it's the same one located on this war belt in multicam. It has a fish trap design, so you stick the mag in there, it catches, and then it won't fall back out if you have to move around. It’s got water holes at the bottom for drainage and stows very easily with a Velcro tab. It mounts with UltraComp MOLLE webbing to go in the PALS loops.

The second item is a much more low-profile design, and these are what I call SSE bags. They’re more used for securing a piece of evidence and keeping it on your person. Maybe I'm in an environment where there’s an active shooter or more than one active shooter, and we shoot a suspect down. There's a pistol that they had, and we need to continue moving to the sound of the guns. There are still people that need to be protected, so we're going to secure that firearm and stick it in that pouch so that someone else can't come into that room and get access to that weapon. That would be an example of what an SSE bag would be good for.

This comes in two configurations: the 10-speed MOLLE and the 10-speed belt variants. On all Blue Force Gear stuff, if it is a belt variant, you're going to have this type of hook-and-loop or Velcro that will go around a belt loop. The belt does not have to have laser-cut or PALS webbing compatibility on it. I can stick this on a leather belt, a duty belt, and tab it up. This pouch also comes with a variant that has your traditional MOLLE webbing to route through the PALS channels on the back of the belt here. When you deploy the pouch, it comes out. This is a much more lightweight design but does not have any stiffening at the top, so you're going to have to fish your hand in here to deposit whatever item you want.

If you're worried about that item coming back out, we've got webbing here where we can cinch it down. There’s a barrel adapter, and we can cinch it up. The downside to this design is that because it is smaller, more low-profile, and less rigid, if you have any type of weight or heft in here, it's going to bounce back and forth when you're running or moving around. If you have to do a hard transition with your weapon, whatever heft or mass you have in here is going to continue on, and that can absolutely give you a little bit of jarring in your wobble zone of your sight picture if you're doing a target-to-target transition. This is another reason why I don't like carrying a lot of weight in a dump pouch when I'm on the range; it affects my ability to drive the gun and park the dot where I need to when transitioning to my next target.

The other downside is that it does not have that stiffened hoop design on top, so you might have to fish it open with your fingertips when depositing items. Once it's in there, as I mentioned, you can tighten it up and it will remain secure inside the pouch.

On the positive side, it's absolutely lightweight with not a lot of material, no stiffening, low profile, and zero snag hazards when stowed. However, it's not going to serve as an admin pouch on your range gear as effectively as a larger, more durable dump pouch design.

In my opinion, the medium dump pouch kind of hits a good middle-of-the-road compromise. It gives you a good amount of rigidity and retention when deployed, but also has the benefits of being stowable when not in use.

If you would like to purchase any of these Blue Force Gear items, they’re available on BlueForceGear.com as well as other instructional and informational material. Thank you.