Bill here. A lot of people run belts these days but there seems to be a lot of confusion when it comes to which ones are belt and which are LBE. While I don't offer belt products I thought I would dive in with what I've learned/know and help clear out help them figure out what type of belt/LBE that they actually have.


Duty Belt: Duty Belts are essentially plain belts. They are not meant to look tactical and are usually just something sturdy enough to mount a pistol and some pouches with. Duty belt does not have MOLLE so they are not that modular. Most modern duty belts now a days are constructed with synthetic nylon webbing and are usually available in either 1.75" or 2" format.

War Belt/Battle Belt: The next evolution of tactical belts are the War Belts. War belts are modular thanks to the introduction of MOLLE in the late 90's. Most modern war belts that on the market today are fully padded with openings on the bottom to mount holster or additional pouches without sacrificing MOLLE spaces. In addition they usually come with suspension points to support a harness (either padded or non padded), in a way they can be considered a modern take on the Belt-And-Suspender type LBE.

Operator/Gun Belt - These are modernized tactical belt that are currently sold by a lot of companies on the market today. By utilizing narrow width webbing or laminate, designers were able to slim them down considerably.  Operator belt have the same profile as a Duty Belt but is still modular. Most Operator Belt comes with a inner belt to provide stability via Velcro.

So what about LBE? What is it and what is considered an LBE? What separate it from a belt?

LBE stands for Load Bearing Equipment, by definition they are rigs that lets you carry your ammo/essentials minus body armor. There are rigs that are described as LBE but It is really an loose/umbrella terms, if you have a chestrig it's an LBE, if you have a vest it's an LBE. If you have a belt with harness in it it can also be an LBE,

When it comes down to it LBE only really consist of two types. There's the Belt-and-Suspender type LBE and there's the Vest type LBE. With an Belt-And-Suspender type LBE all the pouches and load are located around the waist line while the weight are supported by a suspender harness. Think of all the web gear that our soldiers wore back in the days like the LC-2.

As stated before, since most War Belts comes with suspension points to support a harness of some sort, they are considered an modern take of an Belt-And-Suspender LBE.

With Vest type LBE, the amount of pouches that you can mount are depended entirely on designs but usually have enough pouches to cover the torso and sometimes the back. They either come with fixed pouches or they are modular via MOLLE.

With some of the newer designs the definition of an LBE becomes harder to define. Some of the modern vests like H Harness have MOLLE on the back so you can carry hydration pack, some of them have buckles/zippers and functions like an split front chest rig. Some of them let you ride really low just around the waist line so they function more like a belt/suspender type LBE but if you can do the opposite of that they become more like chestrigs. Because of that they are sometimes called Modular Vest, Modular Tactical Vest or Modular Assault Vest.

Some of the best modern example of an Vest type LBE are H-harness.