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Editor’s note: This is the third article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.
In the half-century since the Gates Commission established the all-volunteer force — and especially over the last 25 years — the relationship between the American soldier and the state has changed profoundly. Military service has become more professional, more specialized, more admired, and more socially distant. A simple update to military kit became emblematic of those shifts and the complex relationship between America and its armed forces.
Developed in the 1990s and fielded widely to deploying troops after September 11th, the Modular Lightweight Load-Carrying Equipment system (MOLLE, pronounced “molly”) replaced the previous-generation rucksack and load-bearing belt and suspenders known as ALICE. The ALICE generation kit had served the military through Vietnam, the Cold War, and into the 1990s, but the tactical kit needed an update.
MOLLE was not, by itself, a significant innovation. An external frame backpack made of high-denier nylon is still just a backpack. A smaller “assault pack” formally gave soldiers a medium-sized option that they had informally been carrying through the late 1990s. The more important innovation was the Pouch Attachment Ladder System (PALS), the standardized grid of webbing that allows pouches and equipment to be attached to packs, belts, vests, and armor.
PALS, developed by John Kirk, is a remarkable innovation for three reasons. First, PALS solved a problem, but it is neither an end product (like a weapon, tool, or vehicle) nor a breakthrough technology. Second, PALS enabled the creation of a platform (a common base for easy customization). Third, PALS reflected the military’s shift towards individuality and personalization.
Equally if not more interesting than the innovation is how PALS transitioned to become a common but rarely used aesthetic feature in gear designed for civilians. The end of conscription meant that military service was less widely experienced. For many reasons — to include admiration and respect for the military — civilians began to adopt PALS and then other accessories in a way that was distinct from traditional military surplus.
Viewed together, PALS stands out as an innocuous American defense innovation that had an outsized impact on military kit and American society. PALS is a simple nylon strap designed to organize the soldier’s burden that came to embody a complicated set of American ideas about patriotism, readiness, individuality, competence, and belonging.
Military leaders are constantly dreaming up ways to pack more firepower into assets, especially ground forces, but the realities of physics and combat are stubborn. More weight means slower travel. When stuck between an inflexible limitation like the human body and an increasing demand for combat power, the simple ability to customize and lighten the tactical load is not trivial. Beyond the basic physics of walking speed, a lighter pack improves troop morale, which can be a difference-maker in battle.
At face value, PALS is trivial: nylon webbing sewn in a repeated, evenly spaced pattern. Unlike the pouches that attach to it for specific purposes, PALS serves a less intuitive purpose — modularity. With the explosion in technical assets available, ALICE and other fixed or minimally customizable systems could not meet the needs for each unique personal or tactical situation.
The tactical load for modern soldiers had ballooned since the 1970s. Day and night optics, radios, GPS devices, intelligence collection tools, and first-aid kits all competed for space on the human body in addition to the growing load of ammunition, food, and water. The soldier had become a technologically enhanced node, and those technological assets had to be carried, powered, and readily accessible.
The U.S. Army Soldier Center in Natick, Massachusetts, had taken the lead on solving this problem in the late 1980s, starting with a new vest system and internal frame rucksack. However, feedback from soldiers and Marines during fielding in the early 1990s forced a restart of the program. The tactical vest was an improvement, but the rucksack was too hot, too small, and incompatible with mission needs. The new design featured rods that needed to sit in cups on the tactical belt, which made donning and doffing unwieldy.
In 1995, Natick surveyed 1,300 soldiers to reshape the new kit. To their surprise, soldiers who typically demand lighter kit wanted larger rucksacks. They needed more space to carry all the new, technically advanced gear and ammunition. However, they also wanted modularity.
As loads had increased, soldiers needed to tailor their loads for missions. Soldiers couldn’t afford to take off a backpack and rummage around for a specific item at night under stress or under fire. Nor could they effectively adjust their kit as needed.
Following World War II, the outdoor industry received a well-documented boost from military investments for mountain troops. The American backpack brand Kelty began by combining aircraft aluminum and parachute fabric, which was a vast improvement over wood frames and cotton or canvas fabric. American climbers had been sewing strips of nylon webbing — known as daisy chains — to the outside of packs since the 1970s for easily organizing gear. PALS combined rows of daisy chains to form a standardized grid to rigidly attached pouches.
The PALS design explicitly acknowledged that it was impractical for the Army to design gear for all permutations of bodies, preferences, specialties, and missions. A left-handed grenadier, a medic, and a Special Forces radio operator can now arrange their gear uniquely for their needs.
To solve the modularity problem, PALS did for the soldier’s kit what standardized interfaces like USB did for computers: It set a common standard for decentralized innovation. The PALS standard is a government-owned patent, so unlike other innovations that created exclusive standards — camouflage patterns, for example — PALS enabled open integration that any vendor could adopt in their own way. Some vendors built attachments from fabric, while others used rigid plastic. PALS made the soldier a platform.
Although service members had been wearing body armor in different forms since World War II, the Global War on Terror marked the transition point for soldiers wearing body armor on all missions. This made the legacy belt and suspenders superfluous and gave soldiers a 360-degree surface to attach their pouches. Meanwhile, the urgency of the two wars accelerated preferences for mission-specific kit.
By creating a platform based on an open standard, PALS allowed any manufacturer to build and sell compatible gear directly to the soldier or unit, unlocking a new market. Special operators and infantrymen needed extra pouches for ammunition, secondary weapons, and other combat accessories, while soldiers in the rear tended to have a less adorned kit. Soldiers were now customers, and PALS helped expand American consumerism and personalization to this market.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, conventional infantry units often lived and operated alongside special operations forces whose non-standard tactical kit was perceived as elite. Both conventional soldiers (flush with deployment bonuses and tax benefits) and conventional units (flush with wartime budgets) copied that look to both improve performance and signal competence and combat identity. Vendors that had once served a niche market followed the demand. Money, recurring deployments, personal identity, and a modular platform combined to create a durable consumer market for tactical equipment.
More significantly, this shift reflected a quiet revolution in military policy and culture that recognized that true uniformity — one size fits most — was no longer an acceptable sacrifice. This reflected a deeper change in the character of soldiering: The modern soldier was modular and individualized.
The post-9/11 wars made these transformations visible. Americans saw MOLLE and PALS in the news, recruiting ads, and ordinary life. The grid became part of the visual language of the Global War on Terror. Then, it moved into civilian life. A military acquisition term escaped its institutional context and became a design and fashion label.
PALS was designed to solve a practical military problem: how to customize equipment for the different loads. But after two decades of war, the PALS grid also became a visual shorthand for the “tactical identity.”
At first, MOLLE’s civilian migration was easy to explain. Conscription-era surplus gear had a long history of narrow civilian appeal to campers, hunters, veterans, and countercultural bargain seekers. But the rapid rise of MOLLE’s appeal reflects a distinct shift from previous generations. Unlike “surplus,” which was often utilitarian, vintage, or anti-fashion, “MOLLE-compatible” had become a normal consumer feature by the 2010s.
Instead of used or excess equipment reappropriated by civilians, brands were designing new equipment for civilians in a military-derived visual language. How this happened is what makes PALS so significant. Two examples help illustrate this shift.
The first was the rise of premium tactical consumer brands. During the conscription era, the term “tactical” described the employment of forces at the lowest echelons of combat. For apparel and gear, it meant durable, functional, and ill-fitting. But, in the post-9/11 era, tactical became aspirational.
In 2008, former Green Beret Jason McCarthy founded GORUCK, a backpack and fitness company. GORUCK was one of the first Global War on Terror veteran-led businesses that intentionally marketed itself as “dual-use”, a rucksack equally worthy in New York City and Baghdad. MOLLE-compatible backpacks and gear became premium products rather than bargain-bin surplus.
Through GORUCK, “tactical” came to mean “carried by special operators”. This is an important point of inflection from civilians (and veterans) appropriating used or excess military equipment and, instead, commercial brands making military-style gear for a civilian market. Tactical had become cool.
The second development was the use of military-derived fitness and symbols to connect veterans and civilians. It would be overly simplistic to say that CrossFit, founded in 2000, drove tactical fitness. A more likely driver was Team Red, White, and Blue. Founded in 2010 by Mike Erwin — another Army Special Forces veteran — to use physical activity and social connections to enrich veterans’ lives, Team Red, White, and Blue embraced a big-tent movement and created positivity around civilians sharing patriotic and tactical symbols. CrossFit’s focus on functional fitness and Team Red, White, and Blue’s social infrastructure helped propel MOLLE to wider American appeal.
In the civilian market, tactical now describes everything from boots and jackets to coffee, fitness programs, and diaper bags. The category is sometimes played for comedic effect, but it reflects real preferences for durability, reliability, and organization.
Its appeal extends well beyond veterans and gun owners. Travelers, athletes, emergency responders, military families, outdoor enthusiasts, and civilians seeking affiliation may all adopt tactical products for practical, patriotic, or ideological reasons. That breadth reflects the all-volunteer military’s complicated place in American society.
Since 1974, the United States has relied on a small, professional military. The military, especially special operations, remains highly trusted but also unfamiliar. Products associated with military use borrow their perceived honor, toughness, and legitimacy.
During the post-9/11 wars, troops endured repeated deployments while most Americans had no direct obligation. Military service became more admired but less understood, even as military aesthetics spread through morale patches, ruck marches, plate-carrier workouts, subdued colors, and PALS-equipped bags.
This does not mean civilians are pretending to be soldiers. More often, tactical products express preparedness, toughness, reliability, and commitment beyond comfort. The PALS grid thus symbolizes a society fluent in military imagery but distant from shared military obligation. And because America is the world’s leading exporter of both military equipment and pop culture, PALS has likely had an equal impact on civil-military relations outside the United States.
The civil-military divide is often discussed in terms of policy, demographics, recruiting, or political attitudes. But it is also lived through ordinary relationships. A backpack, workout, or simple accoutrement can create a low-friction way for people to engage without turning every encounter into therapy, tribute, or debate. Viewed through this lens, tactical culture is about connection, not isolation.
America’s 250th anniversary is an occasion to ask not only what military technologies did for civilian life, but what their civilian adoption reveals about the republic. MOLLE’s journey from Natick to the battlefield to the airport lounge is perhaps not as world-historical as other innovations. It did something subtle: It enabled battlefield modularity and helped make the aesthetics of the forever war ordinary.
Jim Perkins is an officer in the Army Reserve and a technologist. After 11 years on active duty, he has led national security information technology efforts at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Onebrief. In 2017, he was a non-resident fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He has previously published in War on the Rocks, the Modern Warfare Institute, and other outlets.
Image: Gunnery Sgt. Bryce Piper via DVIDS.
