Last year we looked at an example of the PLCE holster in black here, as used by units such as the MOD Guard Service and the MOD Police. Whilst these forces are not routinely equipped with SA80 rifles, they do carry long arms on occasion and for these and other users of black equipment the army has produced limited quantities of blackened rifle PLCE equipment. It is one of the two pocket ammunition pouches in black we are looking at today:

This pouch has two ammunition pockets, each secured with the same ‘Spanish’ fasteners used on the standard green, DPM and MTP versions of the pouch:

This pouch is of early manufacture as it has the wire hook on the rear to prevent sliding on the belt and the angled loops to attach the yoke to- later production PLCE would replace these handed pouches with a universal design that could be used on both sides of the belt:

Internally the pouch retains the dividers to separate the magazines, again these would be deleted later when it was realised an extra magazine could be fitted to each side to give a 50% increase in carrying capacity with no change to exterior dimensions:

The base of the pouch has a pair of metal grommets to allow water to be drained out in case of emersion:

I cannot find any markings on these pouches, however at this period in time the regular green webbing was produced with stamped markings rather than a sewn in label and any black stamps would not be visible on the black nylon of this pouch.