Bag made out of battle helmet bags

This giant green bag is made out of repurposed helmet bags that were used in battle. You can buy one for $60 on the designer's web site.

• [Anonymous]

  Not too sure about the “used in battle”, I think what they were trying to say is “heavily used military surplus”. My buddy is a KC-135 boom operator who has a “helmet bag” but I wouldn’t call it “used in battle” even though he’s spent months at a time deployed in Qatar.

  Ground troops don’t have helmet bags, these are for aviators to hold their helmet, headset and other aviation paraphernalia.

• [NeonCat]

  Or you could go to US Cav or Brigade Quartermasters and just buy a helmet bag for under $30. Your choice of military colors, although only BQ has the same green sateen. You’ll have to add your own supr kewl skull graphics, though.

  I don’t know about the pictured items being used in battle, though. You should really have your helmet on before you go to battle.

• [Anonymous]

  It doesn’t look like it’s “made” out of a repurposed helmet bag so much as it “is” a helmet bag with a couple of stickers on it.

• [Berk]

  Good idea that. Twenty quid off ebay. No added designer crap tax. Victory.

  • [cymk]

    @Berk,
    Available for >$20 on amazon depending on style.

    Am I the only one getting annoyed by the “bag made out of” culture? I’m all for repurposing and reusing, but making a few cuts, adding some stitching and then charging 3 times as much?

    • [AirPillo]

      It’s called being a hack and exploiting people who don’t know better. It’s as old as commerce itself.

      That said, I’m tired of it too.

• [jeligula]

  If you have a canvas/nylon manufacturer in your city, you can buy a quality duffel bag for $5 that will last forever. We didn’t even keep our helmets in those dumb things in the USMC.

• [Chas44]

  I use one of these nearly every day to carry my Air Force helmet. A new one is $32 from Gibson-Barnes, available in six different colors and not covered with spattered paint (oh, and it won’t have pathethic fake background stories insinuated into it.)

• [Kerov]

  Somewhat misleading. These bags are only used for aircrew helmets; those helmets are custom-molded to match the contours of the wearer’s head, and are very fragile: they’re only designed to absorb ONE major impact. So you get a special padded bag for them.

  The standard “pot” helmet that everybody thinks of as the typical soldier helmet? No, it doesn’t get its own frou-frou bag. And it ain’t fragile.

  • [dbarak]

    Funny thing about those being helmet bags. In the Navy, in my experience, we used them for everything BUT helmets when flying – lunch, piddle packs, emergency procedures manual, maybe a soda or water, a camera… helmets? That’s what the straps on them are for – carrying. ; )

    • [oasisob1]

      Yep, I don’t think my helmet bag ever actually contained a helmet. Lunch mostly, water bottles, NATOPs manual (prior to my qual), checklists, etc.

      • [dbarak]

        Are you still in oasisob1? I was an AW in S-3As in the mid 1980s, flying out of North Island here in sunny San Diego. Stop by at the USS Midway Museum some Saturday if you’re in there area, I’m a docent there.

• [Kerov]

  Addendum: just remembered that this kind of bag is also used by armored vehicle crewmembers (e.g. tank crews). So that lends a little more credibility to the “carried into combat” line.

  But it’s still not like anybody walks on patrol carrying these things as a murse.