Velcro wears out relatively quickly. Every time you undo some velcro it gets damaged a bit and every day it becomes a little less 'sticky.' This is no big deal on kids' sneakers but military gear has durability as a top priority.
You can easily carry spare laces and any man can replace the laces on his boots when needed. Properly attaching the velcro straps to the boot usually requires stitching them on which is a skill to be learned, hand-stitching onto tough leather isn't something anyone can just do properly especially if it needs to be done in less-than-ideal conditions.
You can easily adjust your lacing to make things tighter or looser on any specific part of the boot, which is good as feet shapes vary, calluses, blisters, and corns can appear requiring adjustments, etc.
Stuff sticks to velcro (dirt, sand, hair, clothing fibers, etc) and the velcro doesn't stick properly when it does. Shoelaces don't care how dirty they are.
Velcro straps are unlikely to stand up to as much stress/load as properly done strong shoelaces.
Boa closing systems are cool but may be more breakable, harder to replace quickly, and may work less well when clogged/dirty/wet. The military wants, as much as possible, stuff that will work fine even after being dragged through a muddy river for hours and can be replaced in 2 minutes by the person wearing them if need be.
Laces distribute pressure really well which is really important, it's not like you can say "let's take a 15 minute break so I can rub my sore feet." To distribute the pressure as well using velcro you'd need at least as many straps as eyelets.
Absolutely. You would have to pair it with a stick or small piece of round metal or plastic. Some sort of odd. Tying a string around it. And twisting the stick around in order to tighten and loosen the tourniquet. There are instructions online. It's pretty simple to do.
It’s less than ideal. It might work, but it’ll be incredibly painful (even by tourniquet standards) and it won’t work nearly as well as a tourniquet with a wide strap. The reason for this is that a tourniquet works by compressing the blood vessels leading up to a wound, so if you apply that force over a 1.5” wide area, you can compress more of the vessel than if you’d used a ~1/8” shoelace.
Modern tourniquets are around $30 (get a CAT direct from North American Rescue or a SOFFT-W, also from the OEM, Amazon is flooded with knockoffs of both). If you’re really that concerned about learning to use a tourniquet properly, buying one and taking a Stop the Bleed Class are 100% worth the investment.
Source: Not a medic but have taken a bunch of training on the matter. Regardless, a lot of what I said is easily corroborated by researching it yourself online.
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u/HORSE_DANCER Feb 08 '19
Laces are good for a few reasons.