"** DO NOT BUY IF YOU WANT TO STORE ALL YOUR GRENADES ON THIS PANEL**
I bought one of these approximately 3 months ago. I committed one of the worst acts of oversight possible: I forgot that IT’S HARD TO REACH STUFF WHEN SAID “STUFF” IS ON YOUR BACK! Yup... sure enough. I bought it, excitedly mounted it to my ARMATUS 2, and realized it was going to be impossible for me to put my grenades IN the pouches and equally difficult to pull them OUT. “But Jonathan” you say, “it’s designed so you can have a BUDDY throw them for you”. Listen here Kemosabi, if I’m spending $15-$18 a grenade throw or $45 on reusable grenades, I wanna throw it. For another thing, I don’t want to have to rely on a “battle buddy” to use grenades. For those of you who have thought to yourself while on the battlefield “hmm, now seems like an opportune moment for a grenade” - you probably know that when you need your ‘nades, you need ‘em NOW. Not on your back, not for your buddy, nay. YOU NEED THEM WITHIN REACH RIGHT NOW. Because of this, I’ll have to take up precious MOLLE real estate to mount grenade pouches elsewhere.
However, all of that information hangs on one question: does the back panel do a good job of actually RETAINING the grenades? Yes. Absolutely. So long as I have my grenade in the pouch, those little “flaps” that you see stay closed unless you want them open. Your grenades stay secure within the pouch. **NOTE** I have only tested these with Airsoft Innovations XL Burst grenades and EG Smoke grenades - meaning your Thunder B’s, Tornado, Cyclone - look my dood, if it’s shaped like a flashbang, it SHOULD be okay. I have NOT tested with EG67 pea grenades yet. There’s a little flex in the pouch, so... maybe? I tried fitting a tennis ball, and that was a colossal fail. If you have EG67’s, then compare those two in size. If your nade is equal in size or larger - sorry dude, no bueno.
Beyond that, the general pouch is GREAT for holding snacks, 2-3 mid caps (depending on the size of the mag) (or) a standard size bottle of water (or) an Odin Speedloader (or) a decent amount of supplies! And for the hydro... uh... sack? Yeah... sack. It holds my SOURCE 2L bladder just fine!
It’s LBX quality - meaning that the build quality is great - I just wish I would’ve thought ahead a little bit. If you really want the Armatus 2, then you should get this to go with it. However, due to the *very* proprietary design of the clip system used by the Armatus (3/4” buckles instead of the standard 1” buckles - this keeps you from being able to use your chest rigs on your plate carrier), I have to recommend not buying the ARMATUS or this, UNLESS you modify *at least* the front of the ARMATUS to use 1” ITW buckles.
By the way - for those of you who are wondering - the quality of Multicam used on this product is absolutely stunning. It’s the goodies on the top shelf.