Let's Talk Body Armor (Feature Length) 101

hey everybody how's it going it's a daily shooter in today's video is just gonna be kind of an informational video I want to talk to you guys about body armor different types of body armor different plate carriers different cuts different threat levels and so forth so you kind of have a better understanding of what you might be looking for if body armors in your future [Music] now on the table in front of me and behind me I have more than a half dozen sets of body armor each one of them I've tested out independently I've shot them with multiple calibers from different length barrels I have really put body armor through the works over the past five or six years and it's been a lot of fun it's also been a very big learning experience but if you're somebody who's shopping for body armor the first thing that I suggest you do is learn the terminology because when you're on a website and you're looking at a set of body armor and there's a bunch of numbers and letters and stuff like that you want to understand what all of that means so the first thing that you want to understand is threat level now when you're talking about threat level for body armor that basically means what type of threat will it stop and so you want to look at those different numbers which are associated with different types of rounds so when you're talking about anything in the level 2 family you're usually talking about something that will stop a pistol caliber cartridge okay so maybe up to a 44 Magnum and then each manufacturer will also state what that means in terms of velocity so it'll stop a 44 Magnum that's up to a specific grain up to a specific speed okay because it's really speed that kills body armor the faster something's moving even if it says that it'll stop a specific caliber if that specific caliber happens to be going a lot faster than maybe the average then there is a potential that that could go through the body armor so understanding that is very important so again level 2 is going to be for your pistol family when you move up to let's say like a level a3 a a level 3 level 3 plus level 3 plus plus whatever else is out there now you're usually talking about your common rifle cartridges so you're seven six two five one your 308 seven six two three nine you know the a K round five five six and so forth now when it comes to level three that seems to be the most common area that people are buying body armor this is what's considered a level three plus right here this is a composite material and then this is a level three right here this is a steel material each one has benefits and disadvantages even the nice super lightweight level three Plus that I'm holding here believe it or not does have some disadvantages even over steel so it's good to understand what those are now again when you're in at level 3 or level 3 plus range you're talking about again specific calibers at specific speeds when you get up to the level fours level 4 plus and even higher that's usually when you're talking about stopping armor-piercing rounds so if you want to stop an armor-piercing round you're gonna have to go up to an even higher level but the price increases drastically now one thing to keep in mind is that when you buy something from a reputable body armor dealer okay you want to buy a good body armor you don't want to buy anything that's super cheap you've never heard of before usually it'll come with a paper that'll look something like this kay you'll get this paper right here I'm shaking like crazy but you'll get this paper right here and this paper will actually have a list of the threats that that particular body armor panel will stop and so you want to make sure that you understand what those threats are so that you're not in front of something thinking that you know this will stop it when in reality it won't so let me go ahead and give you guys a quick example of the difference between steel and composite body armor so if you're looking at a lightweight composite body armor like this versus maybe just a standard AR 500 steel plate like this now a lot of people like AR 500 because the company made a big push back in the days maybe four or five years ago got this stuff out to a lot of different people and it got in front of a lot of eyes and they had a really good marketing push on it and it's also a very affordable option but there are some common misconceptions about steel body armor when I see people test steel body armor for some reason they want to take one of those you know 62 grand green tips and shoot it at steel but here's the thing when it comes to steel velocity really does kill a 62-grain projectile is actually going slower than a 55 gram projectile so the chances of a 62-grain even with the steel core rod that's on the end of the inside of a green tip even with that you have a less likelihood of penetrating a steel body armor plate that's level 3 or higher because the speed is slower you actually have a higher likelihood of penetrating something like this with a standard 55 grain Full Metal Jacket because again the velocity is going to be higher and that speed kills and so again you're gonna have a higher likelihood of penetration with a standard 55 grain Full Metal Jacket now on the other hand when you're talking about composite materials composite materials are susceptible to weight and speed okay but wait plays a little bit more of a factor when you're talking about composites now whether it be ceramic or some type of polymer usually it's the sixty-two grains that have a higher likelihood of passing through than a standard 55 because you have that heavier mass that's hitting this and it kind of forces that expansion out and allows the bullet to actually make it all the way through and so you know again with the steel a higher likelihood of the 55 grain going through because of speed and then with the composites there's a higher likelihood of the heavier 62 or even 77 grains going through and that's again because of the mass and velocity the amount of energy that it's hitting it with so it's different how each one of these plates dissipates that energy now as we also continue to talk about threat levels I want to mention one thing if you see a plate okay a plate like this that says level three and it has an NIJ rating of level three that's perfectly fine but if you see a plate not not necessarily this one right here but if you see a plate that says level 3 plus or NIJ level 3 plus I would be skeptical because the National Institute of justice who has the laboratory that does the testing for this they do not rate anything level three plus so if you were to get something rated by the National Institute of Justice for your company so let's say defender sends this in and they want to have this thing ballistically tested the NIJ is not going to give it a level three plus rating though they will give it a level three rating but they won't give it the plus rating the plus rating is something that happens from the company's end so if the company feels that their plate performed so well that would it would actually stop a threat level that is slightly higher than a standard level three then they can put on the plate that it's a level three plus the NIJ cannot do that so if you see something that's stamped that says NIJ rated level three plus that's when I would become a little bit skeptical because again that is not an NIJ rating you want to look for something that says level three but again if it says level three plus that means the company is putting its confidence in their product saying that it should stop threat levels that are slightly higher than the National Institute of justice so the the thing about that is when it comes to the three plus and and what it will stop that's a little bit extra sometimes with the velocity city of a76 2x5 won the NIJ will test that and it'll stop it absolutely no problem but then you move up to a 308 which might have higher velocities depending on the type of bullet that you're using the cartridge and so forth if it'll stop that which is higher let's say faster and heavier than the NI J's testing and the company has tested that then they can put the level 3 plus on it because obviously it's topped around that was bigger and faster than what the NIJ tested it with so again level 2 pistol level 3 rifle level 4 is when you're gonna get into some serious business so now that you understand the threat levels let's go ahead and move on to the next topic ok so now let's talk about impact characteristics and back face deformation these are very important topics as well each one of these plates is going to react differently if hit by around so you know we have our steel plate right here we also have our composite plate which can be made of some type of polymer woven material a combination of two also polymers I mean there's a lot of materials out there that have been developed now that are very good at stopping rounds and then we also have a Kevlar vest right here this is from safe life defense they had sent me one to test out years ago that was just like this and I put that thing through the ringer and I was really impressed with the safe life defence vest this thing is I'm telling you this thing is incredible it even stopped stuff that was well beyond NIJ standards but still each one has different impact characteristics and back face deformation so when you're talking about steel steel is simply a hardened surface right and so when you hit a hardened surface what happens just like when you shoot a steel target the bullets gonna vaporize and all of that material is gonna be shot out from the plate so while that materials shot out which is what we call spalling all of that material is gonna go somewhere and since the plate sits right here where do you think it's gonna go it is gonna go up and around and probably into your neck if you do not have the proper coating on here you can see that I have pretty much no buildup coating at all there's a simple coating on it which is sort of like bedliner you know just a typical bed liner liner style coating this is not going to do much to stop spalling if you have a steel plate that doesn't have anything on it it's not going to do anything to stop spalling either and so you know that if this thing is hit the the characteristics are gonna be a big flower pattern you're gonna get an instant stop of that bullet and then a flower pattern of all of that spalling kind of going in every single direction so it's good to know whether or not you want to consider you're spending the extra money to get a better build-up coating which is definitely what I recommend a buildup coating will be coat after coat and layer after layer of this material enough so that once a bullet hits it it will actually penetrate that build-up layer hit the steel and then that build-up layer will actually contain the spalling and usually it will contain multiple hits before it allows any of that metal material to leave the build-up coating so that's really important now when it comes to backface deformation on steel there is usually not much at all there's maybe a little dent here and there you know depending on where you hit it I mean I think they still plates hundreds of times and still there's no bulge or dents in the back at all so you get you know the very minimal back face deformation now the interesting thing is with steel plates when you hit steel plates it's gonna ring you it's gonna ring you pretty good too because you're basically having one plate that's gonna absorb all that energy and it's going to feel like a direct energy transfer so if it hits right here directly behind it is gonna feel like a reverberation in a direct hit to the person who's wearing it and that's why they sell things called trauma pads a trauma pad is an additional pad that will fit behind this that is meant to absorb the energy so I mean imagine you know you put on a helmet put this thing right on your head and then tap it a few times and you're gonna feel the tap that you're making on your head it's gonna work the same on your chest cavity right so you want to make sure that if you do you get a buildup coating get some type of trauma pack that will fit you know or trauma plate that'll fit behind this that will absorb the energy of a steel plate being hit by a bullet now when you're talking about a composite material both polymer ceramic and otherwise it is gonna work a little bit different you usually do not have any spalling or very minimal spalling but not from the bullet with a plate like this so if this plate was to get hit the bullets going to penetrate the outer material which is designed you slow down expand and stop the bullet that's why you see these bullets that are always squished right there mushroomed out even if they're a Full Metal Jacket usually they're mushroomed out in something like this because the multi a multiple layers that they use of materials in here are designed to do different things at different levels so it will hit this it will it will break apart it will slow down the bullet and then usually there's a layer in there that will catch the bullet this one right here this defender armor which is its if you watch my channel for a long period of time you know the defender is my favorite type of body armor but this one right here has almost like a built-in trauma pad in it so it's got this soft material on the back right here that's meant to absorb a lot of the energy that that bullet gives it so again this one works by slowing down expanding and then stopping that cartridge and then again it has that soft material what you don't get from this type of body armor is that spalling from the metal because it's not hitting a solid steel surface so you're not gonna have all that spalling come out but what you are gonna have if it's ceramic you're gonna have ceramic pieces that might fly out but they usually tend to fly out a little bit you know away from somebody and if you're wearing a plate carrier more than likely that ceramic material is going to be contained in that plate carrier the downside to this type of body armor even though it's not stealing you don't have to worry about the spalling one thing you do have to worry about is back face deformation and that's because this type of material meant to absorb that round is going to expand out of the back and that's a lot of times why when we test body armor we put it on some type of clay I'll put this on maybe a water bottle like a five gallon jug just to see how much energy is actually transferred or whether or not it breaks the jug or a bale of hay to see how far it pushes in the hay in the back I've tested these out in several different ways to see how they react and the defender armor I've tested maybe four or five plates over the past several years and one plate I put 28 rounds of 556 into it with absolutely no pass-through but when you flipped it around it was all completely bowed out so again you're gonna have back face deformation and that's basically gonna feel like a punch to the chest it's gonna knock you on your ass but it's gonna stop that bullet so by stopping the bullet obviously you're not going to perforate any of your vital organs so again there's plus sides and there's down sides you know more back face deformation on this one but again you're talking about you know some different characteristics on top of material there's also cuts there's several different cuts that you can choose from some people might want one over another and each one is maybe developed for a special purpose so the one that you guys were looking at the original defender this is just a standard cut plate okay nothing special about this just a standard regular cut plate the plate that you were looking at for AR 500 this is what was originally considered their shooters cut the reason was called the shooters cut is because it's cut down a little bit more on the sides since that they've actually made the shooters cut a little bit better so they kind of brought it down a little bit more on the sides and that helps you bring your arms out if you need to be shooting or holding a rifle or a gun or something like that while you're wearing this plate you know you can still get your arms out there because of the cut on the plate right there but there are also other cuts to consider one is going to be considered a swimmer's cut so here is a plate carrier that I have right here this has a swimmer's cut in it and this is my Spartan armor system it's very very heavy because this one actually has extra plates on the side we'll talk about those in just a second but these are level 3 plus steel plates just like ar500 armor but this one is in the swimmers cut that I was talking about now the swimmers cut is really interesting because it is essentially made for extreme movements okay so if you're gonna be doing let me get rid of this noise here if you're gonna be doing a lot of moving a lot of climbing you know if you're got if you have a lot of dexterity so you need at hand then a swimmer's cut might be the best choice for you because it allows the most movement by the way this is a very good plate carrier this thing is not coming out so I'm gonna open this up here real quick so I can show you guys what I'm talking about swimmers cuts aren't super popular and that's because they offer a little bit less protection than a standard a standard cut but still I think it's a good option again if you're looking for dexterity so here is our swimmers cut plate now the swimmers cut like I was saying before is cut small so that you have that extra dexterity I mean I can reach all the way out in front of me I do push-ups I can climb a wall I can climb a mountain I can do whatever I want with a swimmer's cut because it is designed for me to be able to move everywhere but this is a level 3 plus plate right here again standard steel but this one unlike the era 500 armor that I just showed you this one does have a slight curvature to it as well so again cut in here cut in here cut towards the bottom and then has a slight curve now people are gonna say how is that gonna stop anything how's that going to protect anything well the first thing you got to remember with body armor is that it's really only designed not to protect your entire upper torso it's just designed to protect your vital organs so your lungs your spine right all the stuff that's located right here your heart and so as long as it's sitting where it's supposed to be and you're not wearing it way down here or way up here you know you're wearing it right where it should be then it should be enough to stop a direct hit to those vital organs and that's what body armor is intended for but again not everybody likes ass warmers cut because they like the protection to kind of extend out a little bit more as well so we have the swimmers cut we have standard cuts I mean there's a bunch of different other things to consider as well including curvature material size and weight now weight is also a very big issue if you never worn body armor before these things can get very very heavy depending on how you're set up obviously steel body armor is gonna be the heaviest this is a relatively small plate and it's it's pretty heavy you add a front and back plate now you've added that extra weight and then like I was saying before this particular plate carrier actually has side panels you know to protect your kidneys and so forth and these side panels are even heavy so you're talking about a total of four steel plates in this setup and when you're wearing it I'm telling you if you're not in shape you're gonna feel that pretty quick and so it's important to consider what your capabilities are as well how fit are you to carry something that heavy both front and back plates maybe side plates don't forget you might have some medical you might have magazines and stuff like that all loaded onto one setup and if it becomes too much you're just gonna be completely immobile so you want to make sure that you get something that will fit the weight that you can handle now my go-to is back here and see if I can grab this without dropping too much so this is my go-to right here this is my a July tactical k5 plate carrier absolutely my favorite plate carrier this has defender are armored level 3 plus plates in it right now and these plates are fantastic they are extremely lightweight I have two plates in here right now this thing can be setup with magazines medical everything that I want and I'm good to go however this does not have any type of side protection at all you can see that we just have those straps on the side that hold this thing together and that's pretty much it now I did add a pack to the back of this and you can put a helmet in there also by a July so it's got this like helmet pack holder and a backpack for it as well and that's for hydration and stuff like that but this is kind of my go-to set up and this has composite body armor in it level 3 plus again and it's a very easy setup so it's a lot more lightweight and I can keep going pretty much all day wearing that thing and it doesn't really bother me at all I think the total between the two plates that I have in there is maybe three pounds when you're talking about a standard steel plate that could weigh up to eight pounds per plate now the last thing I want to talk about is strike face and expiration date I think a lot of people are surprised to find out that body armor actually has an expiration date even steel body armor has an expiration date and people always ask why that is well when it comes to composite armor the elements are a big factor in that expiration date now the reason they put an expiration date on there is really just to kind of cover their own butts but what happens is when you have a body armor panel like this and it is not properly stored and it's exposed to the elements it will start changing and that's because it can start absorbing a lot of the moisture that's in the air and it will start degrading that body armor so it's not something that's gonna happen really fast it's something that's going to happen over time and that's why the expiration dates are usually like five years out or longer but still it is definitely something that can happen if you're somebody who lives in a wet climate and there's always a lot of moisture in the air and you have this just sitting out all the time then chances are that is going to affect the performance of the plate and obviously these you know companies they don't want to be held responsible because you know you didn't store your plates correctly and so they put an expiration date on there because it covers them for that they know that their plate in even bad conditions will last a specific amount of time and so they'll put an expiration date on it now there's also the the strike face oh I should mention steel body armor steel body armor usually has a coating on it right and underneath that coating you have steel and steel can corrode and so if there is even a pin hole or something where water is allowed to seep into that steel plate the steel can actually start rusting behind that coating and it can also degrade the steel that's behind it and so it's one of those things where they're just kind of covering their butts again because if you store it somewhere where it's wet and that steel starts corroding underneath there and starts getting all rusted out it's not gonna have the same characteristics you know for stopping bullets that it did when you first got it and so that's kind of one of the at least one of the reasons why an expiration date exists for body armor now the other thing to consider is strike face people will ask me is strike face is it all that important because you could take a standard flat plate and put strike face on the front of it but it's exactly the same on the back so why would the strike face matter well if you have a standard steel plate just a regular steel plate with no buildup coating or anything on it then yeah it doesn't matter you can go ahead and use that on both sides but if you have a steel plate that says strike face on it there's a good chance you're gonna want to use that strike face out towards whoever might be shooting at you and that's because a lot of times what they'll do on a steel plate is they'll add extra buildup coating to the front so you're gonna get the most spalling protection on the front of the plate not on the back of the plate also there could be curves to the plate different shapes and sizes and you don't want to put the plate on backwards where it is not supported you know your body supports body armor and so if it's got a curve to it and the curves going out and not in towards your body and that's not supported it's gonna allow that plate to move a lot more and could allow the round to pass through if it's unsupported and it could also cause more damage because a back face deformation so the reason you want to shoot on the strike face only is for several different reasons again with steel when it comes to composite it's even more important because the way that they build up the layers is in a sequence that starts at the front of the plate so the sequence of events that needs to happen to slow that bullet down enough before it actually passes through is going to be set up specifically this way and if you turn it this way there is a high likelihood I've tried it just to see to happen a high likelihood of the bullet going through just a standard 55 gram 556 that I tested on plates before where I've shot him a dozen times and nothing goes through take that exact same plate you flip it over you shoot it one time that bullet flies right through like it's butter and that's because the strike face is meant to interact with that bullet before anything else so again these are all things that you want to consider if you are somebody who's looking at body armor so you want to talk about my recommendations for body armor I particularly prefer to go with a composite body armor and that has to do everything with weight I love the weight of a composite body armor it doesn't matter if it's ceramic it doesn't matter if it's a polymer or other type of material weight is very important especially if you're gonna be wearing body armor for a significant amount of time then you want to make sure that you keep that weight low and so for me I'm always gonna look for some type of composite that's just that's my preferred body armor panel but again I understand that these things get expensive and so if you need to save money it's better to have some body armor than no body armor so if you can't afford a composite then go with a steel but go with something that's curved go with something that's comfortable maybe like a premier body armor which you know will fit you a little bit better and maybe even be a little bit lighter the premier body armor is actually significantly lighter than ar500 armor now I know this video is going a little bit long so I'll keep this part short but I want to touch on carriers real quick this is the fun part to me this you know after I bought my body armor I get to pick the carrier that I want in the pattern that I want for what exactly I want it to do different carriers do different things the first carrier that we have here is just simply to hold plates this carrier is gonna be perfect for holding a plate and really not much more that's what it's designed for this is actually designed to be kind of like a concealable vest right here so I can take this I can put some lightweight body armor in it I can put a jacket over it and wear other things there's not going to be any magazine holders or anything like that it's easy on easy off with Velcro and you know there's nothing on the side it's just this elastic material that's gonna hold everything to you and it's a very simple and basic carrier but it works really well for certain things I wouldn't use this for home defense because it's not really easy on Easy Off so to speak there are other ones that are a little bit quicker other play carriers that I've you are maybe just this Condor I've had this Condor plate carrier right here for about six years now I've used it quite a bit actually a lot and it's held up really well it has a spot for a hose to run through it so you can run hydration Molly oil all over the back so you can add hydration pouches you can eye backpacks on this one I have a Haley strategic pack that I got from MSR Arms this Haley strategic pack is really nice it allows me to run either hydration or just add a bunch of things you know administrative stuff and so forth so you know you can do that with a plate carrier like this and they are basic and very good for home defense the reason that these are good for home defense is because it uses just a simple buckle on the side so I can leave this at the setting or the size setting that I want leave this right next to the bed if I want to and then just throw it on over my head click one buckle and I'm done I don't have to worry about cinching any velcro down lifting any flaps or doing anything like that so for home defense something like this is fine and Condor plate carriers even though they suck ten years ago they've actually come a long way and they're not bad gear now I mean I wouldn't take it to Afghanistan but I suppose you could now my favourite plate carrier is the one that I showed you guys already once before this is again the agile light tactical k5 plate carrier this is like the the Cadillac of plate carriers because it is adjustable in pretty much every single way and a lot like other plate carriers this one right here has an incredible amount of padding on it so you have almost like that you know that's soft padded panel on the back breathable mesh material the top can be adjusted to fit you just right the adjustments are actually on the inside of the plate carrier so that you don't have anything sticking out you know none of the stuff that's gonna be flapping around the front right here you make your adjustments on the inside which is also padded it's got admin pouches on the top right here a bunch of Molli in the front a bunch of Molli in the back and again I've added a you know another carrier here this is my helmet carrier on the back that I've explained already before with the pack attached to that and so this is my favorite it's the most comfortable plate carrier that I've ever tried I probably tried 20 different plate carriers and this definitely comes out on top so far you know I've got my gloves there I've got a way to hold magazine medical equipment and so forth so this is my plate carrier of choice but they work just fine so I would say go with what suits you but you might end up buying more than one plate carrier the reason for that is because if you find one then you find one better once you go to the store and you start trying them on you might find yourself going huh that one kind of chase from my neck let me try this one you'll you'll you'll see it's kind of like a rabbit hole that you'll go down with body armor but it's a lot of fun and it's always good to have body armor you never know if there's gonna be civil unrest or some other reason why you might need to put it on you know I have body armor from my entire family and if something were to happen then I know that at least everybody is minimally protected by their body armor so again it's a very intense and very deep topic that we could talk about for a long time I do have a playlist of body armor tests on my channel which I'll link down below so if you want to see any of this body armor be tested you can just go there and check it out it's pretty cool so anyway I want to thank you all very much for watching I really do appreciate it please like subscribe have a great day [Music]

Channel: The Daily Shooter

Views: 195,530

Rating: 4.9483747 out of 5

Keywords: body armor, armor, plate carrier, chest rig, dfndr, ar500, ar500 armor, k5, k5 plate carrier, condor, agilite, steel plate, composit, polymer, kevlar, light weight, level 3, level 3a, level 3+, level 4, review, test, testing, education, 101

Id: EYYZKb-DWOw

Length: 28min 19sec (1699 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 04 2020