Interceptor Body Armour

I finally managed to get myself a IBA vest (Interceptor Body Armour) last summer.



I've been after getting hold of an IBA for a long while now, It had to be in Woodland pattern camouflage. I've seen many of these on ebay and I've bid on lots of them, but most of the time the auction would get pulled stating that the IBA was a restricted item and not to be exported out of the States. This pissed me off to no end as I'd seen replica versions, like the one by Guarder and while the copy looked pretty decent and the colours in the camo were a good match, it just wouldn't cut it for me.
There had been lots of auctions where I had contact the seller to see if they would sell me the vest without the soft armour as this seemed to be the main problem with regards to exporting the vest, but no luck. I had one seller who was still wanting to charge over $200 USD plus shipping for the vest with no inserts.

But then I finally managed to get hold of one, from a US seller who had it for a really low price, I thought that there must be something wrong with it, but for the price I wasn't going to argue. Almost a month later the vest showed up, with two nice little pink paint splats on the bottom front on the vest. I was a bit annoyed at this and tried removing the paint. I managed to get most of it off and when I mounted pouches onto the vest the stains were covered, so I was ok with this in the end.

I originally bought this vest for skirmishing and haven't used it yet as i've been trying to build up the vest.

At the moment I have made soft armour inserts for the vest to bulk it out, hopefully I'll be able to get hold of genuine Kevlar soft inserts for the vest, but so far whenever they've come up on ebay I've not had the funds to get them.
I plan on adding a set of the Toy Soldier replica Plates to give the vest some decent shape and bulk. These are pretty easy to get hold of but are quite down on my wants list.
I've added a groin protector which has the Kevlar insert, I bought this a while back with a Collar attachment, unfortunately I don’t have the collar yoke for the vest, this is turning out to be more difficult to track down that the actual vest was itself, The main problem seems to be that the Kevlar is actually sown into the Collar and can’t be removed. I’ve seen lots of the Collar Yokes in UCP pattern, but at the moment I don’t have any ACU gear and I’m not planning on getting any for the immediate future, because when I do that will mean me spending a lot of cash of loads of new gear.
I’ve contacted a seller who has one of the Point Blank Collars in Woodland pattern, I’m waiting on them getting back to me, and then my vest will be mostly complete.
I’ve had the collar attachment for well over a year, that’s a year that it’s been sat at the bottom of one of my kit bags and it looks like it will finally get some use. However, again I don’t have any of the soft armour inserts for this, so I’ve had to resort to cutting up a kit mat to shape, I’ve never even seen anybody selling the insert so I’m not holding out much hope of obtaining one in the near future.
On top of the IBA I've added a Woodland pattern Fighting Load Carrier vest by SDS, I picked this up really cheaply and unfortunately the previous owner had taken a black marker to the US print on the shoulder, I've lightend up the ink as much as possible, but it still shows and is an annoyance.

I've loaded up the FLC with all Woodland pattern pouches.

On the front:
Triple Shingle pouch
2 Double M4 pouches by SDS
2 Double CQB M4 pouches by SDS
2 Frag pouches by SDS
Medical Pouch by SDS

On the back:
MBITR radio pouch by SDS
Canteen Pouch by SDS













Looking to add a Bianchi M12 holster onto this and two double 40mm pouches.

I had a M12 holster but the seller sent me one in Foilage Green instead of OD, so I'm on the look for a new one.