Taliv, as someone who has to hump one of those packs, I would disagree. While the current Molle packs are miles ahead of the old Alice packs, they are still lacking when compared against commercially available packs. I think the Marines' ILBE packs look promising, but I don't have any hands on experience with them. Maybe I am not cool enough to get issued the really nice stuff, but I will stand behind all of my comments regarding the issued-to-everyone-in-the-army packs.
Specific problems I see with the Molle large ruck:
- Narrow range of size adjustment. It's too short for taller soldiers to wear properly.
- The hip belt is thinly padded, and the pad is too short to cover the hip bones adequately.
- Huge voluminous bag, handles loads poorly if they are too big for the assault bag, but too small to fill the ruck.
And with the assault bag:
- It's way heavy for a day pack.
- The plastic frame sheets in them rarely fit, and the foam pad sheets break down over time.
- The bag is too small, and if you try to extend the capacity by attaching the butt pack, it just flops around off the back.
- The pockets aren't designed to organize all of the small things that routinely get put in a day pack.
There is a new medium ruck that splits the difference between the large ruck and assault bag, but I haven't had a chance to wring mine out yet.
FWIW, I have been using a Camelbak Motherlode in place of the assault bag for the past couple years.