Where Else Our Cards Serve: The Weight Budget of a Raid
01This story does not begin in 2022
The war in Ukraine did not begin in 2022 — it began in 2014. And our first cards reached Ukrainian service members not "after the full-scale invasion," but back when most of the world was still learning to pronounce "Donbas": in 2015–2017, Universal 1 and Universal 2 cards and prototypes went to soldiers — often hand to hand, without any marketing program behind them.
Over the years there have been dozens of deliveries to military users — professionals whose kit is weighed to the gram. Among the customers is a defense-sector company in the US, which has ordered our sets twice as corporate gifts. We treat that as the hardest audience our product has faced: people who carry everything they choose on their own body, every day — and for whom a tool that fails gets no second chance.
This article is about why the card earns its place in that kit. Not because of marketing. Because of arithmetic.
02Arithmetic with no spare grams
A raid load runs 25–35 kilograms per person: equipment, water, comms, medical, food. The list is closed and competitive — every added item displaces something already on it. In this coordinate system, an extra 200 grams is not "slightly heavier." It is taken from yourself:
A full-size multi-tool of the classic layout weighs around 250 g. The titanium card weighs about 23 g. The difference — 227 grams — is nearly a glass of water, or two radio batteries, returned to the pack. That is the quantity the product had to justify — or vacate the slot.
03What the card actually did
The task list from field use reads as ordinary — and the ordinariness is the point. A tool on a raid is needed not for heroics but for the same work as in a garage, minus the right to say "later":
"I bought your tools back in 2016–2017 — gave them all away to friends over time. Tools like these are needed, and they are rare; it is strange that nobody makes anything similar here."
— AN ACTIVE-DUTY INSTRUCTOR IN THE UKRAINIAN ARMY
He is currently field-testing the new iteration of prototypes — with a single request from us: tell us what you did NOT like.
04The unexpected protagonist: the protractor
We designed the protractor on the card as a drafting instrument. Users at the front found it a direct military application: working with a paper map.
A bearing is not "eyeballed" off a map — it is plotted and taken: a straightedge connects the points, a protractor reads the angle from the grid. It is a basic staff and field procedure, and the instrument for it has two requirements: an accurate scale, and survival in a load-bearing rig pocket.
Cheap plastic protractors and rulers met neither. They snapped in pouches, warped in heat, their scales rubbed off — a consumable that runs out at the worst moment; plastic in a rig lives until the first compression. The Universal's plate — 2 mm of 440C steel or Grade 5 titanium — has none of those failure modes: it does not snap, does not warp, and a laser-engraved scale does not rub off against fabric. Service members mostly chose the black finish: matte, with no glare.
The numbers are not cosmetic. Reading the card's scale resolves to about ±0.7°; a warped or worn plastic scale realistically gives ±2–3°. Over one kilometer of route that is 12 meters of drift versus 35–52. Over a multi-kilometer leg, the difference between "arrived where planned" and "searching for ourselves on the map" is the difference in the class of instrument the angle was taken with.
One more property valued in the field rather than in catalogs: the card does not rattle, does not glint, and has no part that can fall off. A metal object with no moving parts is an object that cannot break halfway. A navigation note that follows from the metal itself: if you plot bearings with a baseplate compass resting on the card, take the Grade 5 titanium version — it is non-magnetic and leaves the needle alone, while martensitic 440C steel is ferromagnetic and will pull a reading sitting right under the capsule.
05What this fed back into the design
Feedback from the most demanding environment is R&D that test ranges normally charge for. A literal example: the request "put the screwdriver into the main tool — it is missed too often" arrived from a user before we drew up the requirements for the new line, and went into them directly. What field use has confirmed:
We do not call this "military grade" — the term has been worn to nothing by catalogs. We call it validation by an environment in which a tool that fails does not get a second chance.
Δ 227 g back in the pack. The card does not replace the big tool — it removes the reason to carry it on the body.
06The limits, stated plainly
The card is not a combat knife, not an entrenching tool, and not a replacement for issued equipment. It is a reserve layer: the tool that is always in the pocket when the main one is in the pack and the pack is not beside you. A second tier weighing about 23 grams.
If your kit needs to cover more ground — fishing, foraging, signaling — that is a separate, dedicated layer, not this card wearing another hat. See Survival Cards Explained for what that layer looks like.
We did not design the Universal for war. We designed it not to fail. Those turned out to be the same requirement — with a different price of error.
Is this advertising on a military topic? +
It is an account of use, written after the fact. We did not initiate these purchases, we do not supply under state programs, and we do not use this topic in paid advertising. But when professionals choose a tool with their own money for years, we consider it right to say so.
Is there a "military version" of the card? +
Service members bought serial cards without modification for years — the base version was the military version. Their requests shaped the modular system's development: maintenance KITs built from field requests, wrenches, Cerakote coatings in black and camouflage. Not a camouflage sticker on a regular product — the same card plus tool modules formed from field requests.
Why not a full-size multi-tool? +
Many carried one — in the pack. The card covers the same list of small tasks in a layer that is always on the body, at a weight budget of about 23 grams instead of 250. In a system where grams convert to water, batteries and food, it is not a replacement; it is the correct second tier.
Is the card's protractor more accurate than an issued one? +
No, and that is not the goal. An issued coordinate protractor is more accurate and more convenient on a table. The card's advantage is that it survives where plastic runs out, and it is already in the pocket. The most accurate instrument is the one that is intact when you reach for it.
Can units order it with custom engraving? +
Corporate engraving exists as a service — details on a separate page. The same terms apply to military orders; insignia and markings are agreed individually.
First issued as Universal 1 in 2015; see how the line became today's 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0.
ENGRAVING Custom marking, agreed individually Corporate engraving terms, batch sizes and artwork requirements on one page. Corporate gifting →Round masses and load figures are typical published values; drift figures are d·tan(θ). Testimonial reproduced with permission, anonymized.
Andrii Gurskyi, founder & engineer, MRF.Tools
In 2015 he went looking for a real tool for his own wallet, found only stamped junk or overpriced steel — and started machining his own. Ten funded Kickstarter campaigns, 4,000+ backers, every reward shipped — several of them through a war. Designed and developed in Ukraine. About MRF →
See every cutout in 3D → Tool Explorer. For the full walkthrough of the plate, start with How to Use a Credit Card Multitool.