woudln't the cloth be affected by the weather and environment, surely if its raining and the things are covered in dust and junk it cant be good for the magazines?

Same material that the ammo pouches are made of on the Australian webbing. Known as 1000D Cordura material. I don't know what you call it, but it's a couple of mills thick, and tough as nails. I don't think you've got a chance of dust and water being a problem.

Same kinda material as this is made of

ok, my line of thought was that if it (the cloth mag) disintegrates upon the bullet beig fired, wouldn't it be succeptible to other stuff, and weak to a degree. although im sure that any stuff any army is using is made to meet certain standards.
come to think of it, a cloth mag would be lighter than a normal mag, wouldn't it?? would it be a bit bulkier as well??

A better pic of the magazine I'm on about. The mag doesn't disintegrate. I think you may have thought that cos it's called a collapsible mag. But that is cos it's flexible to a degree, and you can squash it a bit when it's empty, not because it breaks apart. Not at all weak or suceptable to anything really. That cordura material is strong as all hell, you'll have trouble putting a bayonet through it... a really hard time.

I;'ve seen these collapsible mags somewhere before but can't remember where. You are correct. They do not dientegrate, they are much like the metal can attached to some SAW's - except it is made of the Aussie cordura stuff. Very tough, lighter than metal and flexible, meaning easier to store a few of them in your pack. The rounds inside the "mag" are linked like a normal belt fed, just nicely stored....

Or at least this is hat I can see.
Makes perfect sense, actually. Why didn't we think of this before?

I'm sure we thought of it; but plastic is cheap.

True - and probably even more weather resistant. The cheaper aluminum cans are simple stamped pieces - make a lot of noise though - even more than the plastic ones - that is one advantage of the cloth.

A nice weapon she is!!!!

It sure is. We used it in my company when I did my service in Sweden. I had some problems with the soft cartridges though. They where good becouse they didn't make any noise and they don't take up so much space in the pack. But the problem is that if you arn't carfull when handling the gun the rounds could slip out of position in the links and you will get a jam when fireing. The band brakes in two and you will have to open the cartridge and take out the band, reaload and the keep fireing with the band over your shoulder. Makes you look like rambo but isn't very practical. Another problem is that the cartridge we used is closed with a ordinary zipper which is secured with a button. This quite simple device tend to break open and leaving you with the entire belt of ammo laying in the ground and you will have to use the rambo technique again.
So the soft cartridge has it's good sides but can also be trouble some times.

when we get the 5.56 link for the minimi (C9) it comes in the plastic containers and you have to re-bomb it in the cloth pouch... We only get two issued per man, so that leaves a lot of ammo that is still in the plastic container, the good thing is is that if you are going to be firing a whole box off then you don't really care about noise discipline when reloading a plastic one...

The nylon belts (Condura is nylon) are fine, but we used mostly the M16 mags and split the standard belts into 40's and layered them in a butt pack to keep them quiet, somewhat like we would when we would have a medium mg with us on a recon (M60E in my time), but would take it down to 25's. Once you open up, the split belts were fine since as a recon team its a hit move game or get out of contact.