British Forces Post Office - The "e-Bluey"

The "e-Bluey"

In order to speed up the delivery to H.M. Forces, the BFPO developed a hybrid form of mail, known as the 'e-Bluey', in which letters can be sent directly by internet to the British Armed Forces serving in theatre. The letters are downloaded and printed and then dispatched to the recipient via the traditional military postal system. Letters sent by serving Armed Forces members to family and friends in the UK (from Operational Theatres) are downloaded and printed at various locations in the UK and then delivered to the Royal Mail for final delivery.

The name, e-bluey, comes from the aerograms that are (still) provided for troops on active service and their families at home. Self-adhesive strips along the edges of the paper allowed it to be folded and sealed without the added weight of an envelope, meaning that more of them could be carried by air or by hand for the same total weight. Because of the blue paper these self-contained kits were inevitably known as "blueys", and the name came to carry something of an emotional charge due to the significance of receiving a possibly rare bluey from a loved one. "e-Bluey" was thus a natural term for the BFPO's electronic hybrid mail system.

The entire system uses high level 256K SSL security and encrypted databases. The e-blueys are downloaded from an e-bluey web server (www.ebluey.com) and utilizes Pressure Sealed forms that are printed and sealed with an integrated Printer/Sealer. This ensures maximum security and privacy and the correspondence is not censored or reviewed.

The e-bluey was first conceived of by Brigadier Barry Cash, CE of the British Forces Post Office (now retired) assigning the initial development to Major Roy Walker MBE (now retired) in the late 1990s. The service was activated the week before Christmas of 2000. Photo capability was added in 2005 allowing senders to attach personal photos to their e-blueys.

In the spring of 2003 during the first 3 months of the Invasion of Iraq over 250,000 e-blueys per month were sent, a record that still stands. Subsequently the e-bluey has become ubiquitous with mail delivery for British Troops and currently accounts for 80% of the flat mail delivered to troops in theatre. E-bluey's are available in numerous locations around the globe plus operational Navy ships.

For the past ten years the e-bluey system has been supported by SuperLetter.Com Inc. who provide the software and manage the servers for the e-bluey system. The system has won several awards including BFPO e-bluey System Winner 2001 World Mail Award, BFPO e-bluey System Winner 2005 UK Mail Award and BFPO 2007 UK Mail Award for Technology. Since, 2005 the company has also provided a similar service, MotoMail, to the US Marine Corps and in 2009 began serving the US Army with "Hooahmail".