Ace Link Lvl III Armor Test

hey everyone before we jump into the armor test i have a quick disclaimer to make and that is that going into this test i was a little bit ignorant of what the nij level uh ratings meant and what those plates are expected to be able to stop or certified to stop i went into this test assuming that level three plates would stop m855 or 62 grain green tip after doing some research into what the actual nij certifications are and after watching tests of other companies level three plates that are made of the polyethylene like this one is i again came to the better understanding that that is not what is expected to be stopped so i just want to make sure that that is very clear going into this and correct my own mistake that i say later in the video and then we will kind of come back to that at the end of the video as we wrap up our thoughts everyone today i'm going to be doing what i think is going to be a fairly fun test we're going to be testing out some more armor today i've only ever done one other armor before and it might be familiar with this branding here this is from ace link now previously i tested out their soft pistol rated armor provided to me by kenney proger this time they got in contact with me directly and asked if they could send out some stuff for testing of course i said yes i'd love to and so they sent out some level three armor this time which for those of you not super familiar familiar with the nij rating level three is pretty much all intermediate and most battle rifle cartridges excluding black tip or armor piercing ammo like m2 or excuse me m2ap but we should still be able to stop things like 308 and 30.6 so we're gonna definitely be putting that to the test today uh which should be a lot of fun now one thing i want to mention is given the nature of a test like this it's not something i can do in front of my green screen at home so we're out here on a live range so forgive me for any extra noise that might be going on during the filming of this video it's just something we're going to have to deal with and work around to the best of our abilities so let's go on and we're going to start off this test with what defeated our test last time which was the standard 27 grain solid copper 5.7 ammo out of my cmmg banshee upper and then we'll start stepping it up from there so we've got date of manufacture of 20 2004 i'm assuming that that might be april um no date of issue obviously because this isn't that i'm not that cool uh lot number one uh yeah there's the serial number this is a 10 by 12 plate and again the nij rated level three and this is the body side so you want the the curved side facing into your body so uh let's let's get going okay so we have the plate at about 10 yards away from me i'm going to be shooting at a slightly downward angle so that basically i have my armor propped up against something somewhat solid but with a little bit of give to give it as scientifically significant that as we can get here again we're starting with the 27 grain you'll notice there's no magazine would have made too much sense for me to bring magazines so i had to single feed it but again we're just shooting the regular blue box 27 grain solid copper bullet uh from fn and let's uh let's begin all right [Music] so first hit uh we definitely stopped it you can probably tell from the shading there that there is some slight back face deformation not even a quarter of an inch into the plate it did raise up a little bit around the entrance hole right there which was right where we were going for a nice little tiny hole uh it definitely stopped it it didn't even look like the plate bounced around too much and i do have it on a fairly solid backstop um but the plate did its job so let's step up to let's do 762 by 39 next all right so next up is going to be 762x39 out of my slr 107. we're going to be shooting some uh m67 this is from out of serbia it is brass cased ammo this is some mil-spec ammo out of serbia so let's go ahead and see what happens here again still about 10 yards away from our front not from our steel from our target all right a lot more impact on the steel let's see if it went through i keep saying steel it's not steel armor the the the uh the armor plate level three plate all right so as you could probably tell from the slow-mo assuming my slo-mo camera is actually working properly i really hope it is um we had our impact we're about two inches in from this top corner uh onto the onto the plate and you can see very significant backface deformation uh this this would not feel good it would it it did stop it there's no exit hole there you can see there's some pretty good de-elimination here on the side from what i can tell nothing came out as far as spall or anything like that out the side of the armor but it did stop it and uh kept our box of dirt safe so let's go ahead and step it up keep it with aks and let's go to 545 out of an ak-74 all right so next up is going to be 545 out of my riley defense built bulgarian ak-74 kit we're going to be shooting the poison bullet seven and six uh according to the atf this is so armor-piercing that it could not be imported into the country anymore let's go ahead and see how that handles a level three plate uh let's go all right all right well so far everything is going well um the rounds are going exactly where i intend them to so we had our entrance here we're probably two and a half three inches in from the edge of the plate again a little bit of raised um material there again significant back face deformation but it did stop it we got a little bit of delamination happening here on the side but it did stop it so again would not feel good but that uh you know the significant bruising or possible broken rib or whatever else there is far better than a sucking chest wound um we did stop it and again that's the poison bullet even using the benefit of a bakelite magazine we weren't able to get through so uh let's move on to five five six so next up we have the always familiar green tip 62 grain light armor penetrator 556 ammo this is going to be coming out of my beretta arx 100 i decided to go ahead and do a 16 inch barrel for this test i thought about doing a 10 and a half and then a 16 depending on how this testing goes we might do that still but i just wanted to give it the most chance i know we could do a 20 inch barrel but most people in the us are rocking a 16. so let's give it a 16 a try i shot a target earlier to make sure i know what my hold has to be to get exactly what i want for my point of impact so it's just referencing that uh so let's go ahead and give it a shot i guess literally no pun intended there okay [Music] all right so interesting result um we had the round go exactly where i wanted it to maybe three four inches down from where this impact above it was the 762 by 39 went in again here maybe three four inches in from the side of the plate so i would have thought a relatively robust piece of the material however we had full penetration so that 62 grain green tip did penetrate all the way through this armor so not what i was expecting i would have expected this to stop the green tip however it did not i know that there is a level three plus rating uh that does exist out there on the market it's not an official um nij rating um however i'm i would i again i'm not an expert in armor here but i thought that that had to do with 55 grain bullets going a little bit hotter uh maybe it was 62 green again my recollection here is fuzzy but we did defeat the armor so um we're going to keep cruising with some of the other rounds that we wanted to do then i'm going to try that same 62 grain green tip out of a 10 and a half inch barrel and then we'll see if that also penetrates but that is not a result i was expecting all right so we're going from that surprising result with green tip to another type of green tip so we already did the five seven regular 27 grain now we're going to the red box 27 green which is supposed to be a little bit better performing ammo against armor uh you know i i thought that this would have been a done deal that this probably wouldn't go through and this is just another step in the line of progression here however based on what we just saw let's go ahead and see what this stuff does should be interesting so thankfully if you might it's hard to tell from the video sometimes when the bullet goes straight through it doesn't disturb the plate too much and after i saw that not move too much i was a little bit concerned but we did we did stop it so that is a good thing it did stop the redbox 27 grain 5.7 ammo and i know that that stuff is designed for pistol rated armor so this level 3 armor did stop it um so with that out of the way let's go ahead and step it up a little bit and then we'll hopefully come back around and revisit that 62 grain and see if that was an anomaly or if that's what we can expect from these armor plates all right so next up is probably a first for my channel and that is uh kind of the debut of my gorgeous springfield 03 a3 we're going to just start with some regular full metal jacket 150 out grain six so some long boys here now i was thought about doing 308 and then 30.6 but we're using kind of m2 ball spec ammo and a 150 grain bullet going about 20 100 feet per second is a 150 grain bullet going about 2800 feet per second whether it's 308 or 30 out six remember that the old mil-spec 30.6 is about the same as modern day 308. so let's see if it'll stop uh some some 30x6 love that kick in the shoulder like a mule [Music] so we had entrance right about here a little bit south of where are uh which one was that that 545 anyway down uh from here we had our impact and then we did stop it now there is some significant uh backface deformation there some significant delamination on the side i guess they're interested in my results too um so some significant delamination on the side now that is definitely enough backface deformation to potentially break some ribs depending on where your hit is versus where your plates are but again broken rib is greater than uh sucking chest wound and it did stop it again i there's no sign of spall coming out the side that's just from the separation of the such expansion there um but we did stop it so i kind of had a grand finale planned but what happened with the 62 grain green tip kind of spoiled that um so let's revisit the 62 yeah i guess we'll go with what was going to be my grand finale which is going to be kind of boring now but uh i loaded up the ammo we might as well put it to good use all right so next up we got still 30 at 6 but we are moving up to m2 ap so we got some black tip boys here again this is what i thought was going to be the grand finale to the video being able to punch through without any issue whatsoever because this is designed to penetrate this style of armor again level four is what is supposed to be able to stop this but we already beat it so let's go ahead and continue on um and watch this zip right through this plate there we go [Music] all right so we had point of impact here right in the center kind of lower third quadrant can you have thirds in quadrants uh point of the logo here and we did go through now there's a lot more energy transference then i honestly expected i would have expected there to be more of kind of a zip through leaving the plate more or less unaffected but definitely threw this thing around so again fully expected there so now that we've gone through that let's go ahead and revisit the green tip and see if again this was an anomaly this one over here to the side or whether that is standard fare so we're going to start again with a 16 inch if the 16 inch goes through again and we're going to drop down to the 10 and a half inch and see if it still goes through so should be interesting all right so once again we have the 62 grain green tip out of the 16 inch barrel ignore this dangly boy this is not the barrel that's typically attached hence that my muzzle device isn't even tuned on this thing i just needed a 16 inch barrel to test uh so we're going to go to a place that's more or less unaffected so far and see if we can get this thing to break all right so that's the second round of 62 grain um light armor penetrator that we tested and we once again cut right through the back of the plate i don't know how much energy is still coming out it goes into the cardboard box that is supporting this thing so i think we're at a point where that data is starting to become significantly or uh statistically significant uh so two for two so at this point what i'm going to do is we're going to load it up with the 62 green green tip out of the 10 and a half inch barrel and i'm going to try to go to a more or less um uninterrupted area like right here and see what happens so i changed my mind a little bit before we drop down to the 10 and a half inch barrel i want to try some just regular ball ammo no steel core or anything like that and see what happens [Music] all right so with the 55 grain we actually entered pretty close to where the 386 black tip went through so it's a little bit worried about going into an area that was already compromised by the 30.6 however it was stopped now it's going to be hard for you to tell in this video you might be able to see the little peak right here but that is the uh spot that the ball ammo 55 or 55 grand full metal jacket stopped at so it was stopped it didn't exit through the black tip 386 hole that is a new peak that was not there before and so it did stop that so with that out of the way we'll go ahead and drop down to the 62 62 grain green trip in the 10 and a half inch barrel in this unaffected area and see what happens so now we have dropped down to the 10.25 inch barrel on this and before you get too worried get your jimmies all in a rustling before you start calling the alphabet boys uh this has been sbr so uh let's see what happens next okay gopro started whether or not it's recording what i wanted to record is a whole separate issue all right so the result of that test wasn't exactly what i wanted but i think it's a little bit more interesting than what i wanted so we actually entered in really low here on the plate within a half inch of the bottom of the plate you can see obviously some very drastic delamination however the round is still inside the plate here now i don't expect you well is it oh you know what i think that went through too uh yeah there's a little bit of hair sticking out of there i think that went through too well [ __ ] so this thing doesn't stop green tip uh again i know there's three plus but uh in my opinion i would have thought that uh it would stop out of a ten and a half inch barrel let's try it one more time just so we can be absolutely certain try to hit a little bit higher up on the plate see what we can find out all right so we're on the last uh round of green tip that i brought out with me today let's go ahead and see whether or not this plate will stop it because i'm pretty sure it just went through that time i was a little bit deceived because there was just ever a little bit a little bit of hair sticking out that's what made me realize that it actually gone through let's try one more time all right so we already went into an area that was fairly compromised already a little bit higher up here in the top third of the logo um however we did go through now you can probably see these little hairs sticking out that's what drew my attention last time it looked like there was no hole there but seeing the little hairs sticking through from the inside sheets is what kind of tipped me off and it's pretty obvious here what happened now the hole is a lot less clean of an exit hole than we had the first time um but it did go through so even with a 10 and a half inch barrel this thing does not stop green tip so um let's go ahead and i'm going to kind of think about things and we're going to wrap up our thoughts so now that all that testing is done i want to go ahead and summarize my thoughts about what happened with this plate so again as i said in my disclaimer at the beginning of the video i was operating out of my own ignorance about what level three plates are able to stop and when you consider um you know what you're getting here i think it performed admirably again you can make the determination for yourself whether or not you want something that is going to stop uh level or stop ma5 or you know light armor penetrating ammunition but for what specifications display was made for that falls into it so basically it's like expecting you know a level three a plate to stop ball five five six that's not what it's rated for so of course it's not going to stop it so i want to make that very clear again that's my own ignorance going into it however again we want to talk about whether or not we want plates that will stop that so before we get too deep into that though let's talk more about these plates here so this is the actual certified plates if you go to acelink's website they have just regular level three rifle plates and then they have the certified rifle plates so the certified rifle plates are the ones that have actually gone through the nij testing and certification process to meet the nij's standards so with that the ones that have to go to the nij the process is a pretty intense one and a very expensive one on the on behalf of the manufacturer so because of that the plates are actually going to be considerably more expensive however you can get a same standalone level three polyethylene super lightweight plate for considerably cheaper if you're okay with it being made to the same specifications but not being certified now they do test them obviously in house to meet the certifications but it doesn't have the actual nij stamp on it saying that it is been tested and has been approved so if you don't care about that little check mark but you know it's made to the same standards you can get this for a little bit cheaper because these nij certified ones are not cheap they're about let me actually double check this they're about 320 bucks which is not cheap however you can take over a hundred dollars off of that if you go to just a regular level three rated plate from ace link so and it is also worth mentioning that these are single curve plates so for those of you not familiar typically your real basic real i'm going to say terrible armor plates are going to be just perfectly flat you might have a shooter's cut you might have a square cut you don't want any you don't want the square cut and you definitely don't want even a shooter's cut if it's flat these do a single curve so that's going to conform across the rotational rotund part of your body however there is no vertical bend there is a little bit here because of the deformation but this is going to be flat across the front now that's not my personal preference i prefer a multi-curve plate just because it conforms to your body a little bit more but that would up the cost even more on top of what these things cost so you have to kind of take cost and features into consideration about what it is specifically you're looking for if you're going to do anything at least get a single curve multi-curve again is going to be my preference but this is more than serviceable and i've been running them in a carrier for quite a while now now as i said at the beginning of the video again level three not expected to stop ma5 or any armor-piercing ammo however they do make a level three plus plate now three plus is not an official nij rating that has kind of become an industry rating as i understand it for being able to explicitly stop m855 because of its extra penetrating capabilities and they do make those plates and they're going to be again cheaper than the nij certified one because since it's not an nij rating there's no point trying to get nij certified for that so it is going to be a little bit heavier though because the way they kind of get around that is they have a very hard i believe it's a ceramic um i think it's like a silicone i'll have it on the screen but basically it's a very very hard shell on the outside backed with a polyethylene so that it kind of i'm not a scientist here talking about how armor works but basically it helps defeat take up a lot of that energy and then you have the catching material behind that which will then stop things like m855 so they do have plates that do that but because of that hard exterior you are adding weight so while these are an incredible three and a half pounds those ones jump up to about four and a half pounds so two pounds extra but you add on the ability to stop things like m855 green tips so you kind of have to take into consideration what it is you're looking for if you're all about high speed low drag light weight a combination of plates at seven pounds is phenomenal like going from the e-sappy plates that i ran before this to a set of these was really really nice um i i in fact when i put these a set of these in my plate carrier every time i had a chance to i would hand my carrier to someone so they could feel how lightweight it was and every single person i handed it to was impressed and two pounds might not sound like a huge difference and again going from the three to the three plus it's not a huge difference but going from like a level three to a level four or especially if you're going from steel plates of any level to this it is going to be such a night and day difference and when you're wearing your plate carrier for long periods of time that has begun going to become very very noticeable so if if weight is absolutely key to you and you're not necessarily worried about m855 i would definitely take a look at the ace link level 3 plates again super super lightweight now we do have to take into consideration what kind of threats we expect to face now m855 62 grain green tip is a very common cartridge here in the united states in fact so much so that when the atf tried to ban ma5 a while ago it was not able to be banned because of its in-common use designation so it's definitely out there a lot of people have a lot of it so it's definitely something that i personally would want to have a level of rating against so again i would say if it were me if i were to be buying a set of my own i'd probably get the level 3 plus however if you really care about that nij certification you want that stamp of approval by an agency that has been you know set out to set these standards then again you're not going to be disappointed with these as long as you understand what these things are actually rated to stop so something to take into consideration there and you know one thing just in general while the steel plates are super heavy one of the benefits they have is the lack of backface deformation typically unless you're getting into some pretty heavy stuff that is one thing you are sacrificing with a polyethylene plate like this you are going to be getting more severe back face deformation now we showed step by step along the way what each caliber did as far as that goes so again you have to kind of weigh that for yourself and even with really bad backface deformation you could very well be looking at things like broken ribs things like of that nature but a broken rib to me is far better than a sucking chest wound so again you kind of have to take this all for yourself i'm not telling you what you guys should or should not do i'm just trying to arm you with the information so you can make the best determination of what's going to be right for you so that being said though again if it were me if i was spending my money on it for a very similar price to the just regular non-certified level three plates from acelink i would probably take a good hard look at the um three plus again assuming that you are willing to give up that extra pound uh per plate in exchange for being able to stop 62 grain green tip again something you have to weigh for yourself and if you guys are worried about even heavier threats like the the m2ap um the the black tip 30.6 they do also make a level four plate so you are going to be jumping up and weight considerably again there but they do make the full on plates able to stop armor-piercing ammo so hopefully we'll be able to test out more of ace link's armor in the future hopefully we'll be able to get our hands on the three plus we'll see how this goes with with this test and how they uh feel about their treatment in this one and again i do have to apologize again we're trying to be as honest as we can here but i i do have to take it upon myself to acknowledge that i was ignorant about the ratings going into this and that is 100 on me that is not on ace link and again i confirm that by watching tests of even other companies plates by other reviewers such as mr guns and gear and same exact result where m855 went straight through their level 3 polyethylene plates so i do want to say thanks to acelink for sending this out and being willing to let me test this thing out on camera and again we'll see how that goes and i do have a plate carrier from them as well that i'm going to be doing a review on i have another one that's in the works first once i'm done with that one are going to be getting a ton of time in with their quad release plate carrier so definitely stay tuned to the channel for that if stuff like this is interesting to you definitely subscribe to the channel i do post all my content over to patreon early for those of you who are interested in cool things like that we also do live streams we do a discord server we have a whole bunch of stuff that i try to do over on patreon so if any of that stuff sounds interesting to you definitely check it out because the the contributions for patreon really do make a difference believe it or not black tip 30.6 is not cheap to get a hold of and 5'7 in general is not easy to get a hold of so again i want to say thanks to my patrons for making that stuff happen but anyway with all that being said if you have any questions comments or concerns go and throw those in the comment section down below but as always i hope you got something out of this video and i really appreciate you watching

Channel: OreGear

Views: 1,157

Rating: 4.7916665 out of 5

Keywords: ace link, lvl 3, rifle rated, armor, hard armor, lightweight, polyethaline, PE, test, ar15, 5.56, 7.62x39, 5.45, 7n6, m2, m2ap, lightest, body armor, plate carrier, nij certified, oregear

Id: hwchk0J6qO0

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020