Puncha
Member
Will a modern level IIIA soft armor vest be able to stop a 577-450 slug from a martini-henry rifle at a distance of 10 yards? Assume that the round is loaded to original british army specs and that the rifle is the mark I version.
50-90 has been proven to penetrate and fling "bulletproof" vests around. at such a short range
If the vest would stop a standard 12 ga slug I'd hazard a guess that it would stop the Martini-Henry. Roughly the same weight and velocity.
I don't think the full implication of that has hit home with our planners just yet, because right now we have it both ways- our foes shoot rounds that our armor can defeat (under the right conditions), and they're too disorganized and poor to have equivalent armor that can defeat our rounds. Once we go up against a first-rate opponent again, we may end up having trouble on either side of the equation- perhaps we'll encounter opponents with better armor, or perhaps someone will end up going back to full-power rifle rounds and buck the 60 year trend towards intermediate power cartridges.
Soft body armor penetration is directly related to the velocity of the bullet.
Fast burns on through, while slow gets stopped.
So, it seems that a better question would be if a martini-henry round would cavitate your internal organs regardless of penetration of a vest?Remember this: A bullet doesn't have to fully penetrate body armor to defeat it. NIJ tests include how deep a depression the bullet leaves in the medium, whether or not the round penetrated. If the depression is deep enough to have severely damaged internal organs, the vest will not be rated for that round, even if the bullet was stopped.
We're witnessing a revolution in protective technology. For the first time since the advent of firearms, it is realistic for a soldier to be equipped with body armor that is proof (for a few shots, at least) against the weapon he carries. This is truly revolutionary, and hasn;t happened in, what, 500 years? More?
The end effect (should battle armor become common in other places than the USA and Europe) will be that the soldiers will began carrying more powerful rifles once again (or death rays).
Same bullet now going probably somewhere between 1300 and 1400 fps (assuming it started at 1500 fps). It would still hurt.But if the slug impacted from 50 or even 100 yards away, would level IIIA armor make it survivable w/o blunt trauma killing you?
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I don't think the full implication of that has hit home with our planners just yet, because right now we have it both ways- our foes shoot rounds that our armor can defeat (under the right conditions), and they're too disorganized and poor to have equivalent armor that can defeat our rounds. Once we go up against a first-rate opponent again, we may end up having trouble on either side of the equation- perhaps we'll encounter opponents with better armor, or perhaps someone will end up going back to full-power rifle rounds and buck the 60 year trend towards intermediate power cartridges.
I think that's a good point, Coronach. We won't be fighting Jihadis forever, and some day when we go up against a modern army the current direction the stuffed shirts are moving our military in is going to look short sighted.
Rifle-fired flechettes? Don't they also have ballistic issues?