As a certified Geardo I always enjoy looking through BCB international catalogues, a cracking set of kit porn with a mix of home grown stuff, and the best imported kit BCB can get hold of. Not all of it is immediately useful of course, their under Body Armour cooling system looks very useful, ditto their survival tins, and overt MOE ladders. Their right angled torches not as much use (Heavy, easy to break, not very bright, breakable bulbs etc, whilst their 'Zipits' to 'Reduce the chore of lacing up boots' as much use as tits on a fish unless you’re a fat AGC Clerk who hasn’t seen his own penis since the mid 90’s. Most of their gear is top notch with an excellent build quality; and BCP can’t be faulted for selling stuff that’s in demand, even if the stuff in demand should only be worn for the post Airsoft group masturbation session over Tomb Raider. 'Zipits' FFS!

Anyhow, this is all about one of their useful items. Make that a very useful item indeed. The Personal IED and Mine Clearance Kit weighs 300 Grams (11oz in old money) and comes in a natty little pouch measuring 15x7.5x4cms. So in other words it is really very small, and is the type of equipment that can be carried by an individual soldier in the field. The pouch itself is in Multicam (not desert DPM as shown) and has two pouches, a smaller pouch for storing the small chemical light sticks which are about the length of a thumb up to the first joint and come in Green for clear routes and red for suspect mines/IED’s. The main pouch holds the body of the kit.

In the main body you have a set of metal rings which are used as tripwire feelers. This is the one piece of the kit I wasn’t convinced about. Most Tripwire detectors are something as simple as a piece of rigid wire held lightly with a loop on one end that fits a finger. When you run the tripwire detector above the ground the tripwire detector hits the tripwire and very gently twists on your finger indicating that you have found a tripwire in the vegetation or that you’ve hit a rock or the ground. I don’t see how a bunch of rings will be as effective, especially at night, and they will make more noise and have to be closer to you, cutting down on reaction times. If they had developed a plastic telescopic version I would have been very impressed.

The rest of the items inside it are spot on. As the blurb that BCB says, it is highly intuitive and easily assembled. It consists of a non-magnetic scraper designed to remove loose earth covering a device. A Non magnetic mine prodder that measures again up to 40cms long. Personally if I’m poking explosives designed to kill me I would prefer to be a bit further away, but assembling a 50 metre set of metal rods in 10cm lengths would take too long and the pack would have to be a lot bigger, so this length does the trick. Both of these items fit inside the plastic handle that doubles as a case for the metal rods. A bit of more thought would have had the rods that make up the prodder having the same size notches that you get on the cleaning kit rod for your rifle. That being, when some people inevitably over tighten them you can use the same bit of your Combi tool to loosen them. But a minor quibble, brute force and Lethermans pincers will probably loosen them if you’re a bit thick and over tighten the rods.

The other main thing in the body of the case is 25 coloured marker pegs that the chemical light sticks fit into. It allows you to mark the safe zone for your mates with something other than a twig. It also comes with a handy fabloned card that shows you how to poke the ground and how to mark the path you have poked through the field nice and clearly. Although since obstacles such as mine fields in our gig are nearly always covered with fire, I suspect this might go out of the window. But it will be of great use to Cambodians who want to stop their tourists disappearing in a fine pink mist before they’ve bought their 'Danger Landmines Cambodia' T-Shirts and their Sister for the night.

I showed it to my Father who was a Captain in the Royal Engineers and laying mines was part of his job. He was jolly impressed with it. Saying that, my dad is jolly impressed with most modern kit as he was issued with Shirts Hairy, Puttees and a Charlie G when he started out. In his humble opinion it was enough to do the job of getting you out of a field full of mushrooms*. He did wonder why people didn’t just take their bayonets out and prod the ground like he did in the good old days. I had to point out that the modern SA80 bayonet would probably snap off unless the ground had the texture and consistency of a Sherry Trifle. I was going to speak to my mate in EOD but he’s not picking up his phone at the moment. If I get further feedback I’ll add it at the end.

The main thing that irritated me is that the strap isn’t a Molle strap. It has no popper at the bottom end of it to secure it properly on a set of Molle webbing. The strap requires you to loop back and forth and works on twisting it through your kit enough time to make it secure. And I wasn’t 100% convinced that is enough to secure it. Granted it weighs very little, but that very little is enough to make gravity work against you when bouncing around the place when you’re assaulting a position. In reality this needs securing in a Daysack or Bergen, which means it is either not immediately to hand, or is taking up space. In this case why attach a bunch of straps to the back? That or the popper was missing from my version. It’s such a design flaw.

All in all, this is a great individual kit to back up the Engineer Kit. Its well built, well put together and light. Quite frankly when it comes to mines and IED’s, anything helps when you’re in the perfect definition of 'Poo Creek without Paddle'. Hell, I’ll take a Rubber Chicken to chuck at tripwires if that’s all that is on offer. But this is a lot better. Pity about the strap and the tripwire feeler.


* Blackadder: Now, where the hell are we?
George: Well, it's difficult to say, we appear to have crawled into an area marked with mushrooms.
Blackadder: [patiently] What do those symbols denote?
George: Pfff. That we're in a field of mushrooms?
Blackadder: Lieutenant, that is a military map, it is unlikely to list interesting flora and fungi. Look at the key and you'll discover that those mushrooms aren't for picking.
George: Good Lord, you're quite right sir, it says "mine". So, these mushrooms must belong to the man who made the map.
Blackadder: Either that, or we're in the middle of a mine-field.
Baldrick: Oh dear.
George: So, he owns the field as well?