[Ace of Spades©]

^^ Yea the issued MLCS kit has black buckles, but now the newest MLCS deployment bags all have pouches with tan colored buckles instead of the black. The only way to tell the dif between the mil and civi now is the color and (as funny as it sounds) texture / feeling of the cordura itself. The mil is softer then the civi for some reason.

I too would have thought the opposite, since you know black shows up more on NV, but at the start of the MLCS project, there was not many manufactures of plastic hardware, so they had to use what the could. Like the SPEARS packs being made with black PALS or the old school John Willis SOE gear being made with the black trim. Now days we scoff at it, but back even 8 years ago, no fabric company saw the need to produce the different colored nylon or American Molding never had any orders for anything other then the simple black buckle.