Hesco barriers are for bases. Sandbags are still used by the infantry. Hesco barriers require heavy equipment to place them. Infantry troops don't have that luxury. I am reminded of the time when I was a private in the 82nd. We were going into the field and my platoon sergeant was assigning tasks. He tells me "You will carry 4 sand bags. I was freaked out because sand bags are heavy and I was the M-60 machine gunner. The M-60 and ammo is already heavy. I went to him afterwards and told him that I would try but I didn't know if I could carry that much weight. He looked puzzled at first, then burst out laughing. "Hey, Dumbass, they don't have sand in them when you are carrying them. You fill them when needed." I should have felt foolish, but I just felt great relief.

the major flaw being it works very poorly in wet areas, it needs a dry base and dry fill; if the structure built gets waterlogged you can forget the re-use or dismantle part.

Don't forget that properly filled HESCO barriers excel at absorbing shockwaves.

600 years of intense R and D into explosive penetration and exotic armor to counter it...............LUMP O DIRT! Checkmate.

As someone who spent too much time filling sandbags, I applaud such thinking.

Dude THANK YOU. It is surprisingly hard to find good info on these despite them being so practical

Whoever thought of that container deployment technique is definitely a work smarter not harder kind of guy/gal.

I honestly want to buy some of these for my house. I think they're nice and practical for making some simple walls.

I spent many hours around Ramadi in a loader, both filling and removing HESCOs. The idea of pulling the rod and dumping the dirt out is a nice thought, and _might_ work if you're making a promo video and it was only filled an hour ago. In practice, by the time you're told to remove the things, they've been in place for months or years and seen at least a couple good rains. At that point, they may as well be concrete for most purposes. You couldn't even push them with a D7, most of the time. My method was to simply attack them with a clamshell bucket until they ripped apart, while softening the dirt. Ram them, pinch the top and pull, scrape vertically with the teeth-whatever it took. You ended up with a pile of dirt and HESCO scraps all mixed in, which you could load into a dump truck (or...not).

Imagine you've created a product that killed your Boss who is fond of using it.

automatic sand bag machine used for flood fighting in small municipalities can do 1000 sand bags per hour.. so apples to oranges when they show marines filling single bags one at a time. there's also concrete T-wall that goes up in the same amount of time if fill is unavailable for both. While HESCO was neat addition while deployed it was only successful when it was used in conjunction with other barriers.. But nice video, brought back some memories..

I thank Hesco barriers at Base in Mali, I would probably not be alive if it weren´t for those barriers

Jimmy: *Invents HESCO Barrier to stop floods, but it ends up becoming a military product *Donates to charity, buys Segway corporation, rides one off a cliff to his death *Refuses to elaborate, leaves

We had stacked 55 gallon drums filled with dirt in Vietnam. This was used around the barracks only. They barely saved lifes mortars were the worst because could walk into barracks. Bunkers had sand bags that were same ones used for flooding in the states. Rockets could go through sand bags over bunkers and did killing Men inside. One killing 30 men in bunker. These need heavy equipment to fill not available in the field. We filled sand bags in the field with equipment only shovel required. They weren't very good at protecting us.

That was an interesting segue into the scooter story.

Always wondered what they were called. Hell of an innovation! Sorry to hear about his death.

In the '93 flood, the city manager of Columbia MO had crews filling sandbags using highway salt trucks. Fast.

Dude, you keep up this kind of quality in videos, you'll be 100k in no time.

The Hesco barrier is brilliant, and will be around for a long time 😁👌👌❤️❤️

Been using Hesco since the late 80's

They came with this little hammer/knife tool. Somewhere I have one still.

this video gives me back pain

Outstanding! Interesting topic, well presented. Thank You.

Imagine telling your commander that the attack failed cause the enemy build a giant sandcastle!.

I've NEVER seen a barrier disassembled.

One things for certain, you'll never run out of material to fill them.

They can also be emptied by lifting them up with the same wheel loader, as the internal material just falls out of the bottom.

Gabions were pretty practical for their usage, they could steepen earthworks and the only stuff they would face were bullet and roundshot in which you just need a bunch of mass Sandbags were cheaper and easier to carry which is why they made a resurgence

In the Civil War many confederate ships were known as "Cottonclads" because bales of cotton backed the iron armor plate, was effective against most projectiles of the day.

That's funny that they mentioned that barrier in my State. Was going to mention it as well. They finally took it all down around 2022-2023 hah

Hesco mesh looks like one of those foldable laundry baskets.

They seem good for defending bases from insurgents, or reinforcing back lines to form a defense should the front line move, but I don't see how they'd actually be good on the front lines given that they seem pretty hard to deploy while under fire. sandbags give you cover one sandbag at a time, HESCO barriers only provide cover once you fill it. You might as well dig a trench at that rate.

Sand bags are still used extensively

Fun fact you can make a poor man’s Version out of cattle panels and tarps

If I invented that I’d be watching this from my Viking 120’ yacht in the keys

That is the coolest most informative military vid. More plz

There is a HESCO Barrier set up at West Point Museum or at least the sides of one that shows a warning sign that was used in Iraq.

Heavier to transport but not as much of an issue with modern logistics and heavy lift transport planes and helicopters, and the wider availability of front loaders. Sandbags are still the backup option when manpower is the only thing available, but for larger fortifications HESCO are absolutely incredible.

Been using them for 20+years now...

Hesco makes good body armor too

That's a sad end, for him, but life and death are random that way....

I wonder if that could be used in home building. Adjust the size to about 3-4 feet thick, and use spray on concrete with fiber inclusion, and a solid tamping of the layers.... It could be a solid idea in some areas.

They're a useful tool - it'll be interesting to see how they evolve. Might make some good border barriers around Kharkiv.

I build these in Battlebit all the time!

cool vid and good channel have subbed and pressed the bell hello from Scotland

Great system if you have the time and equipment to set them up. If not get out your old school pioneer gear.

good info!

Like the Roman legions

Each assembly has a small knife included in the kit.

Amazing

There are literally sandbags on top of the hesco barriers in the thumbnail.

2:44 I'm in that photo, in the back of the chinook. Was the last flight in/out of FOB Shawqat and I had to drop some something off for the closedown.

It was Camp Bastion although it is long since gone.

"These soldiers" Shows Marine Camo WALTZING MATILDA INTENSIFIES

What ordinance can those walls stop?? You showed some firing from the front, but not what happened at the rear.

I'm not an engineer but it would seem to me that these barriers could be defeated by use of strips of detonation cord attached vertically to cut sections out of several barrier panels at once, then artillery/tank rounds with a short-delay fuse would blow thru most of the dirt allowing troops to invade fairly easily and provide them with some protection against small arms at the same time! These panels provide no over-head protection and don't allow for gun ports! Having inner walls made of these should reduce damage from artillery shrapnel but would also serve to increase over-pressure in each confined space! If no heavy equipment is available to fill these barriers, then how long would it take for men with shovel to fill them? Where would they get the dirt from? Maybe from just outside the barriers so that they would be making a moat at the same time; one that could potentially be filled with flammable liquids quickly in a last ditch defense!

...these things were common on battlefields for years....called gambions...wicker or straw baskets filled with stone and/or earth...

cool, ive seen those in ARMA

Literally shows sandbags in the thumbnail. Sandbags will always be useful

Highly underrated channel

YES!

Just wondering if it is legal for civilians to purchase and install for neighbors problems

There are nothing new they've been using those for over 20 years. We had those back in 2004.

I need to put these around my house

Does anyone know if they use the dirt from inside the place or outside the base? (Maybe use for trenches?)

YES, I HAVE WONDERED ABOUT THIS ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS IN THE PAST, THANK YOU FOR THIS UPDATE❗❗👍👍✔✔👌👌🆗🆗🙏🙏

If Dirt & earth is able to be used to protect against projectiles, then It will be used until the end of time

A UK company bought by a high official in the US gov in the early 2000s.....and HESCO was "asked" to supply all the wars...and made millions.

You need heavy equipment and the infrastructure that comes from that. Sandbags require bags and grunts with entrenching tools..

0:48 dude thats like a modern castle wall lmfao

Rip sandbags, you will forever be in my heart.

Sandbag requires one grunt. These barriers require a ton of logistics.

What is a hesco but a huge sandbag? 🤔

Funny that it still uses its french word.

wow, you're decades late to the party. we've already been using these for decades.

Sand bags and HESCO barriers are diffrent, HESCO can replace sand bags in a lot of places however if you where let's say, reenforcing an existing building, HESCO barriers would take ay more effort and any hole you can shoot out of would be 1.4 m × 1.1 m wide and not work as cover.

One artillery salvo will turn this barrier into an unusually small dune.

I honestly wonder why we haven't seen these things much in Ukraine, seems like a good way to reinforce areas in a few hours.

I saw a video on here of some steel mesh things that they filled with rocks and they were very effective and stopping high powered rifle rounds. They weren't even very thick either.

Maybe you can sellthis Hesco barrier to our Armed Forces of the Philippines because they will be needing this in areas frequented by enemies. So, it is only a matter of time when they will be asking for this. Please do the sales talk.

You know, if those things were full of empty sandbags you'd have ten times the fortifications in two days

We actually used these in Bosnia back in 1994. Not invented by America, but actually dates back to Roman times, called a Bastion Wall. These in conjunction with sandbag filled container surrounded our base in Gornji Vakuf.

Ukraine is only just now learning how to turn entire Cities into Fortresses actually....but they are learning and learning really fast as that now.

never never never - we need more different sizes but the idee - no field fortification, no field camp nothing without Hasco Basketts

Sandbags are still good at cover while crouching. Hesco barriers are too tall to be shot over

hesco is used behind the lines sandbags are used in zero line

1:24 Why the different diameters? Same sized baskets can be stored inside one another. I think I miss something here.

I still remember learning about dirt being used as a defensive emplacement back when i was a kid on a site visit to a wood fort. Why build walls of heavy stone when you can build 2 wood retaining walls instead?

In the middle ages, they invented this.

Sand bags are still used. Hesco barriers are part of the tools used to build up fortifications, but sandbags still have their place. Things like Hesco barriers have been around for hundreds of years. Hesco barriers are just modern Gabion barriers, which have been used since at least the 15th century. So these sort of fortifications predated sandbags already, but sandbags are still just as useful as they were before.

And where do you get them ?

How does it work against small drones?

The wars in the Middle East would be somewhat different without it but not much since just building a pile of dirt does A similar job and is arguably better and also worse in some situations

And where can I buy hesco barriers?

Government, finding ways to make dirt expensive and complicated.

interesting.

I forsee technology meant to quickly fill the barrier without a large engineering vehicle

The German Camp look like an old Roman marching camp when were they got that idea from😅 Caesar

How much are they. Can people buy them.

Possible improvement: hex cells instead of square-maybe could use lighter mesh since the shape approximates a cylinder and you don’t need to worry about the sides bulging out so much