Let’s take a brief tangent. While my job is to write about firearms for you guys, I have many other interests; one of them is Medieval history. It’s a pretty cool thing to be interested in these days, as YouTube is practically bursting with awesome channels that go into an incredible amount of depth and detail on Medieval-related topics, including everything from swords, to armor, to clothing, and everything else.

Now, one of the best of those channels is the fairly new “Knyght Errant” created by Ian LaSpina, a former US Navy Lieutenant and SH-60B Seahawk submarine-hunter helicopter pilot who recreates Medieval history in his spare time. LaSpina not only talks about Medieval armor (among many other things), he spends a lot of time actually living in it, too. If that subject interests you, his channel is one you should check out for sure.

Now, how does this connect to modern firearms? Well, recently LaSpina released a video I found absolutely fascinating, in which he compared the load of modern US Army and Marine infantrymen to the load carried by a 14th Century knight in full plate armor! You can enjoy this video for yourself, embedded below:

LaSpina uses a document from 2003 to illustrate the Army infantryman’s load – The Modern Warrior’s Combat Load – which is in fact the very same document I used to create my own analysis in An Analysis of the Soldier’s Load with 6.5mm Cased Telescoped Ammunition, Parts 1 and 2.