5.11 Tactical Invited Me To A Pants Party, And It Wasn’t Half Bad

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I am a hard person to find jeans for. Being a short guy tends to make snagging a pair of pants that fit properly pretty damn hard, and to be honest, 5.11 isn’t where I would shop for pants unless I was working as a police officer or defense contractor or something — until now, at least.

The company send over a pair of 5.11 Defender Flex jeans to try out, and I discovered that not only were they surprisingly comfortable, but also surprisingly appropriate for athletic activity. The cotton/polyester LycraT400 Tough Max mechanical stretch denim used to craft the pants is the secret sauce that makes these jeans so flexibly comfortable. If you are looking for a pair of jeans that are high quality and Tim Kennedy-approved, these may be just about perfect.

Trying out the 5.11 Defender jeans

First, these jeans are relatively stylish and unassuming. Military contractors and tacticool types tend to stick out like sore thumbs when they where pants that are khaki and beholden to a king's bounty of pockets designed hold all the contractor things one would haul from place to place. But sometimes contractor folks need to maybe not be obvious from space that they are doing government work.

That’s where these jeans come into play. The Defender Flex gives 5.11 an offering that isn’t a visual giveaway to job type, and also they can be worn around town just because. A friend of mine who does investigations for an agency swears by them as his best jeans for both work and happy hour, which is rare in a federal job.

Trying out the 5.11 Defender jeans

The only things I really disliked about the pants were that the front pockets were a bit smaller than the conventional pair of jeans, which can be a problem in the age of giant cell phones. It’s a small thing to be worried about, but nothing is worse than being chased in your tactical jeans just to lose your most important item to the great outdoors.

Overall, as a stocky short guy, I was thoroughly impressed by how comfortable they were — even after full sprints! And after running them into the ground for two weeks, I really wouldn’t want another pair of jeans. You can find them by clicking on this link.