Website Review: Intelligent Armour

A year ago I had an email from Alex, the owner of Intelligent Armour asking if I could post a link to their gear and training sites, which I was more than happy to do. Since then, Intelligent Armour has gone from strength to strength and now has a fully fledged and fully stocked web store with an excellent selection of gear, more reminiscent of a US based gear store than a UK one.

Intelligent Armour Limited provides tactical equipment solutions for individuals and teams. Our clients range from Government Agencies, Armed Forces, Police, and the Private Security / Close Protection sectors Worldwide.

Our aim is to supply the correct operational equipment at the best possible price, we seek to supply the most up to date field tested tactical products and body armour.

On first inspection the Intelligent Armour is well-designed, clear and easy to navigate. There is the usual selection of Oakley, Blackhawk and 5.11 gear, but further investigation leads to a wealth of unusual and interesting tactical gear aimed at law enforcement, military and private security, and also featuring equipment suitable for outdoorsmen, embedded journalists or anyone interested in high quality, hard wearing clothing and equipment, such as the Bugout Gear bags, Fjallraven clothing range. A the company name would suggest, an extensive range of covert and overt body armour, plates and ballistic helmets is also available. It is also nice to see a range of Fjallraven gear in ladies sizes and styles.

Fans of multicam will also be pleased to find a strong range of Blackhawk MOLLE accessories in this pattern. Whilst not particularly to my taste, it is a popular camo with geardos and airsofters and, due to it's recent adoption with the US army as well as the announcement of the adoption of the MTP camouflage pattern by the British Army, doesn't show any signs of going away in the near future.

My only criticism would be to say that there could be a bigger range of US brands on sale. I have nothing bad to say about the 5.11 or Blackhawk gear that I've come across, but it would be nice to see some others like Tactical Tailor or even some more esoteric brands like ICE Tactical or Maxpedition which you don't see very often on British retailer's web sites. That said, this is not so much a criticism of this site so much as an observation on UK tactical gear retailers in general. I'll freely admit that I don't know the politics behind the supply and demand of gear between the US and UK and this may be down to the US manufacturers and suppliers more than the UK retailers so I'll leave it here as a general observation rather than a criticism of what I have found to be a very impressive and interesting site.

My single favourite item on the site is the Fjallraven Vidda Trousers. At £110 they are not for the faint hearted. Fjallraven are new to me, but I am very impressed with what I have seen of them on this site.

If you are not convinced by the shop site, Intelligent Armour is part of Intelligent Holdings who also have Close Protection, Intelligence and Training divisions and are wholly owned by a former member of the British Army which suggests to me that this is a company that Knows what they are doing.

Intelligent Armour Limited supply to a number of Government units, and we have only recently opened up our marketing to Airsoft; and it's all going very well.

We try to keep our prices very realistic and ship to around 30 different counties each month; every month, our business is growing by 15-25%.

To finish off, a couple of point which may be of additional interest is that Intelligent Armour offer 10% discount to members of the armed forces and police services. A discount which has also very kindly been offered by Intelligent Armour to readers of this blog. Monthly product updates will also be a future feature. Stay tuned.