The End of Milsurp?

Its 2022. COVID-19 was officially declared done and over with one week ago. Businesses still cannot seem to staff nearly enough people to run 100%. The rest of the working class people are working 50-80 hour work weeks now and it is pretty much the new normal. Inflation is still a thing, and gas is $3.71 for the national average, and its $3.21 a gallon where I live.

But what does this have to do with anything as far as milsurp gear goes? Well, in short it is all very much related.

Whether you subscribe to the idea of purchasing and using or collecting military surplus gear that is on you. However. If you are here reading this then something must have piqued your interest in it. The thing is I am not trying to SELL you on the idea of getting into military surplus. But I will tell you a few things about it right now as of the the time I am writing this.

It is clear to me as someone who does use, buy, sell, trade, or collect gear that the supply simply is drying up. Its not even opinion it is pretty much fact. Every major supplier is selling out and not getting more gear as far as I can tell at this point. It is September 26th.

Now right off the bat I should say this. From everything I am seeing and from all the major companies that sell huge amounts of procured used and new military gear the supply chain is not good right now at this very moment. I can speculate as to why for a couple of reasons.

The first major reason is that the U.S. did just get finished with two major wars. Those being the war in Afghanistan, and the US intervention in Iraq. And that isn't including any of the other places we are currently policing like Syria or Somalia. With two major wars declared over, you would think there would be huge amounts of US gear available. Well... sort of.

Without going too far into the politics and the absolute fucking shit show it was exiting Afghanistan, lets say more than just surplus gear was left behind.

$85 Billion dollars worth of gear was lost overnight, and the Taliban became proud owners of more Black Hawk helicopters than 80% of the rest of the weaponized world. Although, they did manage to crash some of them.

Normally, ending a couple of decades long military conflicts would be good for the market as far as the supply and demand. But we didn't really get a whole lot of this. Sure. We got some military UCP stuff hitting the market and with the prices that would be expected for one of the worst camouflage patterns ever made. But even that equipment is starting to sell out or not be restocked.

The way it works usually is that once military surplus is gone, it is simply gone. Unless some sort of third party company picks it up and decides to make clones or copies or even gets the rights to make the trademarked patterns. What is out there is what is available. And that is it. Think companies like STURM or Mil-Tec.

This is particularly true for foreign gear.

Right now, there is a major conflict with Ukraine and Russia. Just yesterday, Russian forces have essentially mobilized and implemented a draft all the way up to males age 70. They are desperate, issuing rusted barely functioning AK's and whatever is essentially left after months of being decimated by the heavily backed Ukraine.

You can feel however you want about this conflict but what is clear is most of the NATO allies are backing Ukraine directly or indirectly. This has been going on for a while. Since like 2014. And its literally civilians fighting with whatever they can get.

What has happened is most of the surplus equipment as far as I know has been donated and given to the people fighting for Ukraine. Some footage and pics that have leaked out by their forces has shown a lot of very old and outdated gear. Or surplus weapons and gear being used.

Now is a bad time to try and get into surplus equipment. Much like trying to buy a house during the housing crisis, which is also still going on. I do not see much of anything changing at the moment for a lot of European military surplus at this time. I think stocks and sizing will be poor to non-existent for a while. If the fighting stops over near the Russian border maybe something will let up and we will see restocks. But nothing soon.

There has been one good thing though that has come from all of this.

Suppliers stateside seem to have prioritized getting the US gear they can get. What I have seen is a better variety and scope of what they can atleast try to keep stocked while the European variety is slim to none. The big outlets for milsurp gear seem to have diversified and kept up stocks on the US gear.

Right now for example, you can get quite a variety of Eagle Industries equipment. Legit stuff with NSN numbers on it. The NSN is the National Stock Numbers that the Department of Defense uses to identify the contracts to supply the gear. The drought of the European gear that I normally would buy has lead me to start to dive into what the US has to offer. And luckily there is quite a bit of useful surplus kit still out there. As a result, prices have increased and show no signs of slowing down. 

Should you go and buy US gear right now? Maybe. If you absolutely need it then get it if you have the coin. Will the prices come down? Debatable. Its totally reliant on if the caches of old stock will hit the market or if we will start to see it going to other places. Supply and demand.

However all of this is subject to change, and this is a snapshot right now of what I am observing at the moment.

Military surplus gear is great for a lot of different things. For people who like to shoot, LARP, play airsoft, collect, or have very rough use gear for camping and outdoor activities, it is great. Right now isn't the best time to be really into it but the hope is that the conflicts that no doubt are affecting the market will change for the better. If you want to test the waters of the USGI stuff and use molle gear, buy a standard hydration pack and see what it is like. They can be had for a couple of bucks and be used for general storage. Check them out. But don't go and bogart all the pouches and packs. Some of us are still trying to procure them.