Every group has this conversation eventually: what gear actually matters, and what’s just noise? Instead of writing another top-down gear list ourselves, we put the question to a few members at different points in their own gear journey — a longtime member with years of training behind him, a member balancing family and work with regular training, a member with prior military service, a member focused on firearms fundamentals and dry-fire practice, and the author of this post. Same questions, five different answers, and a lot of overlap in the parts that matter most.
The goal here isn’t a shopping list. It’s helping newer members spend money where it actually matters instead of feeling like they need to buy everything at once.
The Three Levels We Asked About
We broke the question into three stages: a new member just getting started, an established squad member who’s been around a while and regularly trains as part of a squad, and a member running full or extended kit — someone equipped for longer operations with a squad, including night work, weather, navigation, communications, medical, and sustainment.
New Member: What You Actually Need
The consensus here was almost unanimous: keep it simple, keep it functional, and put your first money into fundamentals, not features.
A member with years of training behind him put it plainly: a quality holster and sidearm, four magazines, eye and ear protection, a safety introduction, and basic skill development. That’s the starting point — not a complete kit, a foundation.
A member balancing family, work, and training focused on the rifle side: a basic rifle with a red dot and a sling, sized to how soon you plan to add night vision (some optics wash out badly under NV, which is worth knowing before you buy). He recommended a chest rig over a plate carrier at this stage for capacity and modularity, and specifically flagged a budget chest rig he’d bought as poor quality — a reminder that “cheap” and “affordable” aren’t always the same thing.
From the author’s side: a rifle, sling, four magazines, comms with hearing protection, a basic first aid kit, and a bag large enough to carry what you need for a short patrol. Beyond gear, the real requirement is knowledge — understanding the basics of staying safe, helping others, and bringing something to the table, whether that’s a drive to learn or something to teach.
Established Squad Member: What Changes
At this stage, the theme shifts from “get equipped” to “get proficient and start contributing beyond yourself.”
The consensus load-out: a battle belt setup, a quality sidearm, your primary platform, full safety equipment, an IFAK, and communications — all tested against a baseline skill standard, not just owned. For mid-level kit specifically, an assault-style pack with hydration capability and room for additional magazine storage, built around a basic belt setup, came up as the next logical addition.
The author’s take on this stage leans toward growth beyond your own gear: at least eight magazines, an understanding of your own role and some working knowledge of others’, a better grasp of communications and how information actually moves through the group, and starting to help educate newer members while still improving yourself. This is also usually when people find their niche — diving deeper into a specific area like drones, armor, communications, or medical — while still understanding the group’s baseline requirements even outside that specialty.
Full Kit: What “All In” Actually Means
Full kit isn’t just more gear — it’s gear that supports longer, harder operating conditions, paired with a skill level to match.
That means night vision, reliable communications, a plate carrier, battle belt, assault pack, primary and secondary weapons, complete safety equipment, and an advanced IFAK — tested against a higher skill standard that includes physical fitness benchmarks and team-level actions, not just individual proficiency.
The author’s description of this level goes a step further: members here are no longer primarily a concern themselves — they’re teaching in multiple areas while continuing to improve, and their focus shifts toward developing others. They typically carry specialized equipment like night vision or thermal optics, and just as importantly, they can use and repair each other’s equipment. They understand not only their own capacity, but the capacity of everyone else in their squad.
Worth noting: even members well past the new-member stage aren’t always fully there yet. One contributor was candid that he’s still working on solid helmet-integrated comms and better radio integration — currently running a budget handheld with a cheap earpiece and passive ear protection. Full kit is a target everyone’s working toward, not a box most people check all at once.
Quick-Fire Questions, Straight From the Group
Beyond the level breakdown, we asked a handful of sharper questions. Here’s what came back.
What are the first five things you’d tell a new member to buy?
The author: the basics to train with, and then actually train with them — see what other members have, weigh the pros and cons, before spending more. Our member with prior military service framed his five concretely: a rifle-and-sling combo you’ve actually zeroed and can shoot comfortably, properly fitted eye and ear protection, four to six magazines you’ve function-tested, a basic IFAK with a tourniquet you’re trained to use one-handed, and boots that are already broken in before your first field day. Nothing on that list is exciting, and that’s the point. Another member focused on firearms fundamentals kept his list just as concrete: a quality firearm, a quality holster, a quality belt, ammunition, and a class from a reputable instructor. Buying good judgment early matters just as much as buying good gear.
What’s commonly recommended but really isn’t necessary?
The recurring answer: more of everything. As the author put it, he’d rather see a member with one rifle and basic equipment who trains constantly than a member with five rifles and little knowledge. Our military-background member named the specific culprit: night vision on day one. It’s the most-requested item from new members and usually the last thing they actually need — you can’t use NVGs well if you haven’t mastered moving and shooting in daylight first. Let it be a reward for proficiency, not a substitute for it. Another member’s answer was refreshingly simple: anything outside your budget. You don’t have to buy everything at once — save up until you can afford the right gear instead of stretching for it before you’re ready.
What’s something cheap or simple that turned out to be surprisingly useful?
A cheap sling, from the author’s experience — he doesn’t use his constantly, but he’s seen it help a lot of the people he’s trained alongside. Our veteran member added two more: a cheap red-light headlamp and a permanent marker. Neither costs more than a box of ammo, and both get used constantly — marking gear, jotting down a frequency, finding something in your pack at 3 a.m. without wrecking everyone else’s night vision. Another member swears by two cheap dry-fire and range essentials: tap-rack assist devices — about $7 for a set of three, and great for dry fire — and a Safariland belt clip for hanging ear pro, which he called $8 he couldn’t live without.
What’s something you bought thinking you’d use it constantly but rarely do?
A dedicated breaching tool, per our member with military experience — bought early, convinced he’d need it, and it’s mostly sat in a bag for years since. His takeaway: if a role genuinely calls for it, the group should own one or two, not every individual. On the regret side, a member balancing family and training offered a costly lesson: a budget plate carrier paired with steel plates. Cheap carriers offer little structural support, which dumps all the weight onto your shoulders — after a multi-hour training event, that combination became genuinely miserable, even in a slick rig with just a hydration bladder. Another member pointed to a $200 dry-fire mag built to reset the trigger — useful in theory, but it’s mostly sat unused since he picked up a Mantis Titan X, which he says has replaced most of his other dry-fire gear outright.
What gear became important only after you gained more experience?
Night vision came up from multiple directions — the author called it something close to a superpower, but noted it only became genuinely useful once more of the supporting equipment around it was in place. Our military-background member pointed to something less flashy: a map and compass he actually knew how to use without a screen. He carried a GPS for years before realizing how badly he needed a backup that didn’t depend on batteries or signal — and said the same was true of a proper sling, which he didn’t appreciate until he’d put real miles on a rifle. Another member put it more bluntly: anything with buttons that attaches to an AR-15. Lights, switches, and offset optics mean little to a new shooter, and become genuinely useful once you understand what specific problem each one solves.
What should every squad member have, versus equipment only one or two people need?
Communications came up as a group-wide asset every time. Specialized weapons — a .50 caliber platform, or even a dedicated shotgun — were flagged as something a group might only need one of, not something every member should own individually. Our veteran member framed the general rule well: every member should own the same baseline — rifle, mags, eye and ear protection, an IFAK, and comms. Specialized gear, whether that’s a designated marksman setup, a belt-fed weapon, advanced medical gear beyond an IFAK, or a breaching tool, belongs to a role, not to everyone. A squad doesn’t need eight of anything specialized — it needs one or two people who own it and know it well. Another member’s list matched closely: everyone should have an IFAK, full stop — but a litter and a spotting scope are examples of gear that only one or two people in a group need to carry.
What belongs on your body or in your pack versus in the vehicle or at a base location?
Our military-background member broke it down cleanly: your body carries what keeps you fighting — weapon, mags, IFAK, water, comms. Your pack carries what keeps you operating for the length of the mission — extra layers, more water, food, batteries. The vehicle or base location holds what sustains the group beyond that — bulk water, fuel, spare parts, and the heavier medical gear you hope you never have to open. Another member summed up the test simply: anything you’d need right now belongs on your body — medical gear especially.
What changes when you’re operating overnight?
You learn fast that some gear looks fine in daylight and lights up like a beacon under infrared.
The author’s experience matches that directly: making sure your clothing and gear aren’t unexpectedly bright under IR is something you don’t think about until you find out the hard way that you’re practically glowing while feeling completely invisible in the dark. Our veteran member added that discipline matters more than gear overnight — light discipline, noise discipline, and IR discipline. If your group trains with night vision, everyone needs to know what their own kit actually looks like through it, not just what it looks like to the naked eye. Another member kept it blunt: it’s darker, it’s colder, and you’re operating equipment you likely have far fewer reps on — reason enough on its own to practice at night regularly, not just during the day.
If you had to rebuild your kit from scratch today, what would you do differently?
The author would cut down on the trial-and-error of buying cheap items and instead save toward the right ones from the start — while still holding that expensive gear isn’t always necessary, and that skills matter more than stuff in most cases. Every group tends to have someone who ends up with great tools to share; not everyone needs to be that person individually. Our veteran member agreed from a different angle: he’d spend less on gear and more time training with less of it. Every dollar spent before he had the skill to use something well was a dollar that taught him nothing. Another member took a slightly different view: his kit is constantly evolving, so he wouldn’t change today’s setup outright — what he runs today isn’t what he ran last year, or last decade, and he expects it to look different again five years from now.
The Common Thread
Five different people, five different backgrounds, and the same conclusion kept surfacing: buy the basics, train with them, and let your own experience — not a gear list, and not what someone else is carrying — tell you what to add next. Skill consistently outranked equipment in every answer above. The gear that mattered most wasn’t the most expensive; it was the gear that got used, understood, and eventually taught to someone else.
If you’re a newer member reading this, don’t feel pressure to arrive with a full kit. Show up with the basics, train consistently, and build from there — see the calendar page for upcoming training days to start putting that gear, and yourself, to work.
- The opinions in this post belong to individual members and are not an official gear recommendation or endorsement by North Idaho Militia as an organization.
- This post is for general information only. Firearms, optics, and safety equipment should be selected and used in accordance with proper training and all applicable laws.
