HRT Rac Plate Carrier : A carrier and weapon system in one

Breaking down the front bag first, we see the front has two loop back molle sections along with one standard molle band. The sides of the loop back molle section also have an area to place in ITW clips to connect in a placard or connect the placard in via molle bands. The placard attachment method is absolutely the best in the business and also allows connection of the Haley Hitchhike so you can actually access your rear pack.

The front of the carrier has two large loop backed portions to connect in your cummerbund and placard. Take note that this does not have a molle section and you would need a molle placard adapter or other equipment in order to connect in legacy molle pouches.

At the bottom, the plate bag pouch connects on the inside of the carrier so you have a very large variation in plate sizes.

On the rear of the front bag we see two loop backed sections at the top in order to swap the one QD buckle from the left or right of the carrier. Along the front of the plate bag are also two loop backed molle strips where you can connect in pads like the PIG pontoon. It may not be needed though as the HRT RAC also has two foam pads that run along this section on the inside of the carrier. The nice part is that if you don’t like these pads, you can always open the bottom and remove them.

Moving to the shoulder straps, we see that there is only one shoulder QD that can be swapped between sides and the other is just a regular strap connection. While the strap could easily be cut, I still would have liked to see the QD on both sides as sizing is a bit of a challenge in the current configuration. The shoulder strap covers are also nicely padded but not too bulky. Along the shoulder pads is also additional cable management with another small section built into the rear of the shoulder strap to further aid in cable and antenna routing.

Moving to the rear bag, we have the shoulder strap sewn directly into the rear bag as we have seen on almost all the setups. Also included is a drag handle that is attached tightly to the rear bag. On the rear bag we see a proprietary back panel system with two loop back sections, 5 tabs, and 4 zipper sections.

The rear bag system allows you to mix and match pouches for various mission sets. So you could run a full row of GP pouches and then attach a maximus pouch above it. Or you could fill both slots with the HRT hydromax. This system is versatile in that allows a large variety of HRT products and those products aren’t priced like many other companies where the rear pouches cost more than the carrier.

Moving to the cummerbund, we used the 2 band molle style. The two band molle allows for you to connect in mag pouches easily and I used the Ten speed mag pouch to add two 556 magazines. The cummerbund also offers a slit to add soft armor but the inclusion of soft armor and it’s non-standard spacing would make for a fairly limiting level of protection. The cummerbund connects and adjusts in the rear via elastic bungee. This is not my favorite connection method as it makes adjustment challenging and I would have difficulty sizing the carrier around really small or large frames with this one size of the cummerbund.

Next, we went into a series of tests and we took a look at where the HRT RAC measured up on our plate carrier ranking chart.

Hopefully, this review of the HRT RAC was helpful in your purchasing decision. Stay tuned as we dive into the HRT sporran and HRT Hydromax rear bag to see how they measure up!

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Music by the amazing Barren Gates