They investigated: all incidents falling within Schedule 2 of the Armed Forces Act 2006; Although an SIB appears to have existed in the British Army of the Rhine in Germany between 1919 and 1926, the origins of the army's SIB are in 1940, when twenty Scotland Yard detectives were enlisted in the Corps of Military Police to deal with the pilfering of military stores within the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France.

[2] The unit was formed on the recommendations of Detective Chief Inspector George Hatherill (who later went on to investigate the serial killers John Reginald Christie and John George Haigh, and the Great Train Robbery) and command was given to Detective Superintendent Clarence Campion, head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Record Office, who was commissioned as a Major.

Campion was hit in the head by shrapnel during the Dunkirk evacuation and died on 20 May 1940, the only SIB casualty of the BEF.

Under the supervision of Colonel Claude Harper, Elliott managed a 500-man force which investigated crime in Egypt, Palestine and later Libya.

[3] The SIB (RMP) consisted of about three hundred personnel, including Scenes of Crime Officers and forensic technicians.

It was divided into numbered units called Investigation Platoons (for instance, 33 Inv Pl SIB Regt), which are subdivided into Detachments, each usually commanded by a Warrant Officer Class 2.

The Armed Forces Bill 2006 seeks to require the SIB to refer investigations into inherently serious crimes directly to the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA) rather than to commanding officers.

Five officers and fourteen NCOs were given the assignment of investigating the Stalag Luft III murders immediately following the Second World War.

The RAF Police SIB differed slightly from its RMP counterparts in terms of rank structure, employing a mix of Corporals and Sergeants.