3A Body Armor vs. 5.56 Nato and 7.62 x 39

I were out on the range today and we're talking about level three a body armor and your old-school Kevlar military flak vest specifically about their ability to stop bullets now level three a body armor is intended to stop projectiles fired from handguns in traditional handgun calibers like nine by nineteen forty Smith and Wesson and 45 ACP it'll even do really well against the more powerful handguns like ten millimeter 45 ACP plus P and 44 Magnum but it is not intended to stop the projectiles fired from rifles in traditional rifle calibers like 3030 308 Winchester 30.6 the list goes on at Astra in fact the warning label is stated in part it is not intended to provide protection from rifle fire in the early days I was in the military when we still had these something we were trained on extensively is this is not a ballistic vest it is not intended to stop bullets however in the military sense when you say stop bullets you're talking generally about 76 to by 39 or 545 by 39 so the question is will either of these pieces of body armor stop conventional rifle bullets specifically talking about full-metal-jacket spear point ammunition fired from 556 NATO or 760 by 39 the answer is no they won't but as soon as I say that I'm inundated with things from the what if we gave like well what if you're shot on a Thursday with a ten mile an hour side wind by somebody named Marvin and the lists of nonsense goes on and on but recently I've gotten a couple of little more of the legitimate questions from some viewers asking about are there any conditions under which either of these will stop the projectiles fired from 556 NATO or 7.62 by 39 and the answer is you know probably not many and we really can't test every what-if scenario but let's do a couple of tests and see if we can at least shed some light on that question 5 5 6 & 8 projectiles especially the 55 grain ball have a tendency to start tumbling after going through even the slightest barrier and one of the legitimate questions I was asked is if one of those projectiles goes through a barrier and is tumbling and hits your three a body armor sideways instead of point-first under those conditions will the three a body armors stop that projectile now that's a good question and I'm going to try to put that to the test I'm going to go back 50 yards and I'm going to shoot with my ar-15 a two five five six NATO 55 grain ball through these two barrels now this will barely slow the bullet down at all but it should make it start tumbling and then we've got back here our shooting seed target which will allow us to see at what angle the projectile hits the target and then immediately behind that we have our three a body armor now if you were wearing this body armor your body has some give the barrel has some give which should make it a legitimate test so let's go back to the yards and we'll shoot and see now if some of these projectiles didn't come with all and a couple of them hit almost completely sideways so let's see what effect that had on our 3a body arm so the idea is when the bullet hits sideways you've greatly increased its surface area and taken away its spear point ability to cut through this body armor however the result was by increasing its surface area you just made a bigger hole in the body armor so the question will a sideways bullet be stopped by three a body armor no not unless whatever made it tumble also slowed it down a whole lot more than those two barrels slows down these projectiles now I've got my worcester 1063 loaded with 7.62 by 39 123 grain full-metal-jacket spear point and as we've seen in previous demonstrations this little log is not going to be enough to protect you from this round but I'm going to go back 25 yards and demonstrate that anyway we also know that this flak vest will not stop an ache a round but if we put the flak vest over you then can the combination of inadequate cover and inadequate body armor together make adequate protection let's find out it would appear the answer's no in fact that bullet after going through the log through the flak vest through the soda jug still went out the front of the flak vest so let's add some more inadequate cover replace you with the flak vest back around you and now see what happens this time the performance was much better instead of the bullet going through the soda bottle and then through the front of the flak vest it went through the soda bottle and was stopped by the front of the flak vest and I had to dig it out of it here it is let me show you a close-up of it and there it is and after going through all of that it's only slightly deformed so we'll add one more log put the flak vest back over you and see if we can come up with some combination of cover and flak vests that'll be adequate well I think we'd just about beat this horse to death I guess hypothetically it's possible you could be behind some combination of cover that would allow your flak vest to become adequate against rifles like this but I think that situation would be rare to say the least however if you have one of these old flak vests don't despair it does have some use let me show you something so we see the aka goes through this thing pretty easy but what if we shot it with a handgun the same thing three a body armor is supposed to stop well we've got four soda bottles cover that with a flak vest now go back seven yards and shoot it with a couple of different handguns now a lot of times soft body armor bullet will hit it hard enough that it will break things like a water jug or a soda bottle under it even if the bullet doesn't penetrate so if you see orange soda leaking reserve judgment until we do the neck Rob we'll start with our beretta 92fs nine by nineteen 115 grain Full Metal Jacket round again reserve judgment till we're done now let's try our Colt government model 45 ACP 230 grain Full Metal Jacket round let's take a closer look now you saw the soda spewing out of this bottle it does not have a bullet hole in it it was just cracked by the concussion all eight of those rounds were stopped by this flak vest so although it will not stop 5.56 nato was 7.62 by 39 it most certainly will stop conventional handgun rounds so depending under which conditions you use this thing it could be a very useful item to have we know that if you shot either of these forms of body armor with a rifle and caliber 22 long-rifle that it would stop the bullet but if you shoot it with a 5.56 nato it won't now a 22 long rifle and a 5 5 6 nato fire an almost identical diameter bullet a 22 is typically a 40 grain copper wash or brass wash projectile while the 5.56 is a 55 grain copper-jacketed projectile and that will make a difference but not profoundly so but a 22 is typically given you a velocity of around 1,200 feet per second while the five five six is giving me a velocity of over 3,000 feet per second and that is a profound difference but what if you could slow down the velocity of that five five six by virtue of distance if you're being shot at by something that's so far away the bullet slowed down enough will these forms of body armor become viable protection well what I'm going to do is go back to the 300 yard line that's approximately 277 meters and I'll shoot both of these with our AR and RAK platforms and we'll see what happens [Applause] [Applause] so how do you do well our free a body armor got hit by projectiles from both rifles all of which went through and through the half-inch thick board behind it as far as the flak vest now that's a little different the back of this flak vest has been shot several times it's compromised but we were shooting through the front and it got hit by several projectiles from both rifles all of which went through went through the back and still went through the half-inch thick board behind it so the idea that shooting from 300 yards is going to allow for enough loss and velocity these body armors become viable doesn't look like it's going to work so what can we take away from all of this today well as far as what I'd consider the nonsense questions such as is this type of body armor viable on double-coupon Tuesday at Taco Bell I'd say the answer is yes right up until the spaceship lands but as far as the legitimate questions I guess I would have to concede that it's hypothetically possible that a situation could occur where insufficient cover aided by insufficient body armor aided by a significant distance between you and your adversary could create a condition under which these types of body armor would be viable against these types of rifle but although hypothetically possible I'd consider such a situation extremely implausible so the real bottom line is three a body armor is very good for what it's intended for protecting you from handgun projectiles and your Kevlar Flak vest is good for what it's intended for protecting you from grenade fragments and shrapnel and it's got the added bonus of being really good protection against most handgun rounds but as far as either of those being viable protection under any conditions against serious rifle cartridges I'd say either of them is going to cut it so as always don't try this at home I'm what you call a professional and thanks for watching our soft body armor versus the rifle video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 660,908

Rating: 4.9459562 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 6JwlzR5nPFw

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Radeni]

Mind you that IIIA is weaker than III which UN and Kirasa are.

[u/RedFunYun]

In game body armor ratings are Russian based, not US NIJ based.

http://www.sentineltailors.com/GOST-R-EN.pdf

[u/Hotcowrod]

aren't the ingame ratings GOST R not NIJ?

[u/WhiskeyRiver223]

While the PACA is currently over-performing compared to reality, you're confusing NIJ IIIA, which is explicitly handgun-rated, with GOST-R-50744-95 Class 3, which is explicitly rifle-rated.

Gonna do you a favor and copy-paste the summary from this thread I made a while back detailing exactly what real-world body armor standards mean, which one EFT uses (hint - NIJ ain't it), and what that should mean for in-game armor. Do yourself a favor and read through the entire first half of that thread's OP, I made it specifically to educate people.

System Comparison Note - due to the radical difference in acceptable BFD/BFS between the two standards, this only focuses on what each classification is rated to stop.

NIJ IIA is roughly equivalent to GOST 1. Handgun-rated up to 9x19 or .40 S&W FMJ/ball.

NIJ II is roughly equivalent to GOST 2. Handgun-rated up to .357 Magnum JSP.

NIJ IIIA is roughly equivalent to GOST 2A. Handgun-rated up to .44 Magnum JHP or a single 12 gauge slug.

NIJ III is roughly equivalent to GOST 3 thru GOST 5. Rifle-rated up to non-AP 7.62x51mm and non-AP 7.62x54mmR.

NIJ IV is roughly equivalent to GOST 5A, 6, and 6A. Rifle-rated up to 7.62x54R API.

[u/lirosek]

I dont get it? Pretty much shown whats ingame no?

[u/Spijker84]

These vests are fairly equivalent to PACA, right? If so, game mechanics are okay with that vest.

[u/STL_reddit]

What in game rounds aren't penning the soft armors? This vid seems pretty equivalent to what I see in game.

[u/gunther_41]

First off, that doesn't compare to the game...untar and kirasa are different types of armor

Second...why do you even care? It's not realistic so they can balance the game properly...otherwise helmets wouldn't protect you from any bullets and kopak would fail to stop buckshot