Hugh,
I have had the opportunity to serve as an 03 with the Marine Corps, an officer with a small police department and in private contracting. During that time, I have been able to use all sorts of nice kits, and my experience stems from that.
I would say Velcro is not a good idea in my opinion, unless you include silencers (additional pieces of Velcro) which can be used to silence the hook and loop tearing noise. We often would sew extra Velcro into magazine pouch closures of similar on radio pouches, et cetera. So if you are headed out on a mission and need to keep quiet, you essentially disable the Velcro and hopefully have a secondary buckle (fastex) type closure to secure the items in the pouch.
A good friend of mine, when I asked him about his worst moments with Velcro, said “SNOW”. He said when you get snow up into the Velcro hook and loop and it freezes into the material it’s very difficult to tear back open without causing one side of the stitching to tear off the actual gear.
Again, I don’t care for Velcro in tactical gear, once it goes bad on gear and while in the field it’s near impossible to replace or repair. A nice alternative to this is gear with bungee straps; these are quiet and easily repaired or replaced in the field. We can all obtain several extra feet of bungee cordage, and it’s light and packs small.
Hope this information is of use to some of you out there, and God bless and keep you all in the coming days. Keep your powder dry. – D.H.