The recent World Defence Show in Riyadh (WDS24) was a great opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the latest Combat Boots from YDS.
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YDS Group (Yakupoğlu Deri Sanayi A.Ş.) is a major Turkish footwear and leather goods manufacturer, established almost one hundred years ago, which today exports to over fifty countries and supplies many military and police customers on three continents. For over two decades YDS has owned Yorkshire technical footwear brand GOLIATH and its combat and patrol boots are also very familiar to UK armed forces and blue light services.
At WDS24 in Riyadh I grabbed the opportunities to not only discuss latest international military and police footwear developments with the YDS General Manager and Export Sales Regional Manager, both of whom I have known for many years, but also to take three of the Ankara-based companies currently very popular brown military boot models off the display stand to photograph them. The three models illustrated here, which were photographed under expo lighting conditions so do not give a true representation of colour, roughly fall into the Patrol, Combat High Liability and Cold Wet Weather categories.
Although they might fit the recently publicised UK MoD Contract Notice requirements, do not presume that these models are aimed specifically at this market as it is pure coincidence that I photographed these three boots in Saudi Arabia on the day that the UK details were published online.
If all goes to plan I hope to be able to evaluate the middle model of the three, the YDS Tornado combat boot, in the not too distant future. Watch this section for more.
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