Battle belts — who doesn’t love them? Like the old man, my back makes me feel like I can remember the days where we all just mounted everything to our armor carriers. With the advent of plate carriers that offered less mounting space, the battle belt began filling the role. We used to make them from belt parts of our old Load Bearing vests, but these days Wilder Tactical is giving us more purpose-built options.

Today we are looking at a whole lot of Wilder Tactical gear, and the vast majority of it comes as a complete kit called the Ultimate Operator Package.

What’s In the Ultimate Operator Package?

The Ultimate Operator Package comes with the Wilder Tactical Minimalist Belt, two rifle magazine pouches, two handgun pouches, and a tourniquet pouch. The pouches are made from molded polymer and are aimed at 5.56 magazines. I’ve also tossed CZ Scorpion magazines in the pouches, and they were well-secured thanks to the adjustable compression strap design. It holds the magazines nice and tight without the need for a bungee cord or flap to keep them in place.

The pistol pouch can hold anything from a 1911 magazine to a massive double-stack Glock 21 magazine. The pistol pouches utilize the same adjustable strap design like the rifle magazine pouches. You can also stack the pistol pouches on the rifle magazine pouches together to reduce the space needed for magazines.

The Tourniquet pouch is purpose-built for TQs and uses a compressions strap for retention as well. The pouch fits the SOF-T and CAT, so you’re covered with both TCCC approved TQs.

All this makes up the Ultimate Operator Package and provides you the basics you need to outfit your battle belt. You’ll need to add an internal belt, and I used the Wilder Tactical minimalist belt. I also added a Blackhawk Omnivore as my holster of choice and a Defense Mechanisms DIC Pouch as my medical kit.

Find the Wilder Tactical Ultimate Operator Package on their site. 

How It All Comes Together

The belt pad is insanely comfortable, and it’s textured on the inside to help prevent the belt from moving to and fro. On top of that, there are several internal loops that allow you to connect the kit to your pants belt for more stability.

The Wilder Tactical Belt Pad allows you to choose exactly where you want your gear. You simply weave the belt under the slots until you find where you want to drop a pouch. At that point, the belt goes over the pad for as long as necessary, and you call it a day.

The Minimalist belt uses a Cobra buckle and provides an excellent degree of support and ratcheting-like tightness. The belt also accommodates the numerous pouches the Ultimate Operator Kit includes without issue.

The pouches are easy to get on, but holy crap are they a hassle to get off. This is a good thing because the last thing you want is the pouch to come off when you’re moving and grooving. You might be cursing it when it comes to removing the pouches to make adjustments or to change them out.

Running and Gunning

I’ve been using this belt for a long time now, and it’s well-proven. Loading up 60 rounds of 5.56 and anywhere from 45 to 60 rounds of 9mm can make things a little weighty. However, the belt holds and supports it perfectly fine. Add in a loaded handgun, medical kit, and a TQ, and the weight is increased considerably. The good news is that the belt can take the abuse and support the weight.

It’s hard to simulate the crazy conditions you find in the field at home, but to do so, I often just work out with the gear on. Various pushups, squats, box jumps, tire flips, kettlebell swings, and other fun exercises to test both the comfort and retention of the system. It also showed me the adjustments I needed to make to ensure everything on the battle belt was reachable.

You may also like: Building the ultimate multipurpose gun belt setup: Part 1.

The Ultimate Operator Kit with Minimalist EDC belt has proven to be a consistently awesome rig. The kit moves up and down slightly when jumping, but the magazines stay put, and the belt doesn’t chafe or rub. It also barely rotates, less than an inch to the left or right.

The open-top magazine pouches make it quick to draw your magazines. Nothing feels clumsy, and pulling your magazines is easy; just ensure you space them just far enough apart to fit your hand. Once I placed them close enough that they nearly touched, so I had to make some adjustments.

Price and Quality

A low price is often indicative of low quality but not always. The Wilder Tactical Ultimate Operator Kit isn’t made-in-China cheap, sure. But it’s affordable when compared to other high-quality gear. It keeps up with other high-end brands, and I tend to prefer the Wilder Tactical magazine pouches versus other options. They fit everything from P-Mags, Lancers, G.I Mags, and everything in between, and they fit them all well. It’s small enough to shove in my GPS Range bag and go.

The Wilder Tactical Ultimate Operator Kit is available in a multitude of colors, and sizes. They also offer kits aimed at LEOs and an Urban assault kit. Of course, you can also buy everything separately and design your own.

 

Wilder Tactical Gear

Show ’em some love.