First Spear’s Missing Links turns any MOLLE attachment accessory into a belt mounted accessory. The pictured pistol magazine pouch offers excellent combination of speed and retention.
Back in the day, I was a huge fan of Eagle Industries, a family-owned “tactical” nylon company with then forward thinking designs. They brought us products such as the MC-CIRAS releasable vest and an excellent modular plate carrier system that I still use today. The company was eventually sold to ATK, who also bought out Blackhawk Industries and also owns Federal, Speer and CCI. They still make tactical nylon, but most of their products go straight to government contracts and is generally unavailable unless purchased on the secondary market.
One of the products I liked quite a bit was the FB magazine pouch. This kydex reinforced pouch features a cloth backing for retention. A velcro secured strap folds back to front which allows the user to decide whether each pouch needs the additional security of the flap. These are now hard to find, especially in a belt mount model. Most pouches now are made for MOLLE type webbing.
Recently, I needed to upgrade some of my duty gear and realized I didn’t have any more spare pouches for my G17 magazines, so it was off to the Internet to find a suitable replacement. The first place I looked was to our friends at First Spear. This company was founded by the brain children behind Eagle Industries, including Scott Carver (son of Eagle Founder John Carver) and my good buddy Jonny. Their latest evolution of the nylon magazine pouch has everything I liked about the legacy Eagle pouch. It is Kydex reinforced with what looks like upgraded cloth backing. Instead of velcro (which eventually wears out) secured flaps, the First Spear pouch utilizes shock cord with a pull tab which works just as fast as the flaps, and can either be left unsecured or completely removed as desired. And it is nice that these pouches are readily available.
Another ingenious product from First Spear is their Missing Link. This little adapter converts any MOLLE pouch into a belt mounted pouch, eliminating the need to stock a metric buttload of pouches to set up between your webbing and belt. Most pouches on the market seem to be made for MOLLE so having a few extra of the Missing Links on hand gives me the ability to attach any of these pouches to my belt. Initially, I was skeptical as to how secure the pouches would be, but once attached to the belt via the Missing Links, there is no additional play or wobble in any of the pouches I used.
I love all the advances in modular armor and load carriage systems, but most of what I need is to attach gear to my belt, and the Missing Link allows me to do that with any MOLLE pouch.
I recommend either ordering direct from First Spear, or through excellent dealers like my buddy Steve over at Triad Tactical. NOTE: First Spear is offering half off of all MOLLE pouches right now! Go over and order any MOLLE pouches you have had your eye on!
Ditto on the missing links. We use them on my team and I have ordered over a hundred of them. Great solution for those with the need to attach MOLLE to a duty style belt.
I’ve been interested in Blue Force Gear’s Ten-Speed pistol mag pouches. They use “helium whisper”, which is some kind of proprietary MOLLE platform, correct? Any idea if these are compatible?
They should work. The helium whisper is pretty flexible (I only have one BFG ten speed pouch) so you ought to be able to thread it through with no problem.
Another fan of the Missing Link! Use ’em with TT pouches, and they allow me to run the same pouches on different platforms.
It’s a solution but they are still pretty floppy and loose on a duty style belt. I bought a first spear double mag pouch and the missing links but it wasn’t stable at all on the belt. These were also thicker duty belts (Jones Tactical and Ares Gear), so it would even been more loose on a thinner belt. I like First Spears gear and innovation but I wish they would make a duty belt specific mounting system.