I don't want to sidetrack the conversation here, but this question of better boots and different types has got me thinking. Is the fact we as an institution cannot seem to produce or procure a adequate combat boot a problem with the supply system or the R&D system? Is this a case of the right hand not talking to the left or something?
I mean when the vast majority of troops prefer to spend their own money for proper footwear doesn't that tell people who are working on these projects that there's something wrong with where we have been going?
Take the wet weather boot, GP boot or desert tan boot produced by boulet boots in Quebec. Everyone I've spoken with who use their feet as a primary mode of transportation have come out against these things. Even more worriesome is the ammount of people suffering ankle and foot injuries as a result of wear. The common thread I've heard is that the boots are overly heavy, they don't provide the right ammount of ankle support or they don't fit well. Then you take the same people and throw them in some Swats and the problems vanish.
I think two principles need to be acknowledged here by those on the Temperate Boot program. One, that no one boot type will work for all troops, therefore a variety of similarly coloured ones are needed. Two, in the time it has taken the CF to develop requirements and industry to respond to them there have been VAST improvements in terms of the ergonomics and production techniques. These advances have not come from the cumbersome beauraucracy that is DND, but from industry. They are design features that have been developed from lessons learned in hiking, sport, and military experience over the past decade of war. The result is products like Swat, Rocky SV2, Bates to name a few.
Now here's the important thing and I REALLY hope someone out there who has an influence on this process reads this. These boots have already been in use with our field troops for years and have faced some of the toughest conditions on earth. Me personally, I've used the Rocky SV2 on TWO tours to Kandahar and they lasted through em. The only thing I had to do was replace the laces every few months.
This info is out there and it won't cost the government any more than it has already spent to send us to Afghanistan in the first place. Just save the money that we may give Boulet for yet another incarnation of the same proven to be inadequate boot and instead buy SWATS, Rockys and whatever else is safe and shown to be what the troops need. This way if a trucker or mechanic need safety boots with steel toes, they can get em. Or a tanker needs something that lets the circulation in his feet flow better by being lower on the ankle, he can find em. Or, and god forbid, an infantryman decides a certain boot has the features he needs to make the next 20 K easier on his body, he can get em. And all of this while not spending money that is hard earned and better spent taking care of their families.
PLEASE.
