We wrote last month about how popular the Tyr COMA harness and PICO plate carrier were among Special Forces sniper school instructors down at Bragg and we got a T&E sample of the PICO to try out during our assignment with the Navy Riverine squadrons at Fort Knox.
Up front, the PICO is a darn nice plate carrier from our perspective. It's light, tough and streamlined. It also easily accommodates Tyr's myriad pouches, so you can tailor it for full-on door buster missions or standard patrols (or in our case, journalistic pursuits). The Sailors we patrolled with in the 100+ degree heat of the Salt river were pretty envious of the setup.
The PICO has both an internal and external cummerbund to stabilize both the carrier to the torso and to distribute load to the overall carriage system. The PICO is built utilizing Tyr Tactical’s revolutionary PV500 material which is used to remove access bulk of material and add strength in key high strength, high wear areas. This allowed us to give the PICO an extremely overall low profile.
The PICO features:
- Anti microbial/ FR treated spacer mesh on the near body side of the carrier and pals adapter panels
- Fully adjustable shoulders with removable pad system
- Adjustable internal and external cummerbund.
- External cummerbund provides a flexible platform for adding Tyr Tactical’s “Pals Adapter Panels”, which affords the operator the most flexibility with interchanging loads or mission adapted required gear.
- The Assaulters version comes standard with the LW112-AS4 Side Pals Adapters that allows for the increased load carriage on the exterior of the carrier and carries 2 M4 magazines in close to the body. The LW112-AS4 Adapters can also have the capability to be turned into 6”x 6” side plate pockets.
- Removable front flap for weapons system change out for both 5.56/7.62 or a flat molle or no molle flap.
A couple things we had problems with on the PICO was the short profile of the carrier and the plate pocket size.
It takes some getting used to wearing such a low profile plate carrier -- it's a bit disconcerting to have so much flesh exposed below the plate pocket. Tyr president Jason Beck assured us this is normal, and for those of us who have long torsos, the shoulder straps adjust easily to bring the plates lower.
The other thing that we have to stress is that you need to make sure you purchase the right version of the PICO if you take the plunge. There are three sizes designed for three different thickness of plates, and we had one that was too small for our lightweight (but over-thick) Level III plates.
The PICO is cool, but it ain't cheap. At nearly $600 without plates, you gotta really want to make the investment. But Tyr is developing quite a following and with the solid endorsement of Tier-level operators, they're sure to keep the pushing the design limits.
NOTE: Kit Up! readers will receive a discount of %15 percent on Tyr products by using code KITUPTYR at checkout.
