The hesco barrier or hesco bastion is a modern gabion for military fortification. It is made of a collapsible wire mesh container and heavy duty fabric liner, and used as a temporary blast or small-arms barrier. One of the less heralded life- and labor-saving devices of war.

Originally designed for use on beaches and marshes for erosion and flood control,the hesco bastion quickly became a popular security device. In general, it takes far less labor to build a Hesco barrier than an equivalent structure made with sandbags.

       

Assembling the HESCO bastion entails unfolding it and  fill it with sand, dirt or gravel. The main advantage of HESCO barriers, strongly contributing to their popularity with troops and flood fighters, is the quick and easy setup. Previously, people had to fill sandbags, a slow undertaking, with one worker filling about 20 sandbags per hour. Workers using HESCO barriers and a front end loader can do ten times the work of those using sandbags.

The HESCO barriers come in a variety of sizes. Most of the barriers can also be stacked, and they are shipped collapsed in compact sets.

A new system of HESCO Bastion developed specially for military use is deployed from a container, which is dragged along the line of ground where the barrier is to be formed, unfolding up to several hundred meters of barrier in minutes, ready for filling with soil by a backhoe.