FN 5.7 -or- Five-SeveN -- How effective against armor?

Factual Questions
21

I’ve been a large fanboy (and I can admit it) of the p90 and the 5.7 round ever since I fired a p90 about 6 years ago with the civil air patrol…
the 5.7 round was specifically designed to allow rear area troops to carry a small submachinegun that could punch through body armor – the ss190 round.

The Five seveN has been commercially available to the public for a year or so now, and fires the ss192. The ss192 is a hollow point round. It does well defeating armor, but slows quickly, only pentrating appx 6" or so. I’m sorry I cant find the webpage links for the tests I’ve seen, but they are in message boards out there, I’ll keep looking.

few webpages on the pistol and the round

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/is_144_24/ai_57886949

http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg18-e.htm

<hijack> I’m always confused on the uproar over every new pistol that comes out that can beat body armor. The tt33 has been around since WWII, fires a 7.62/25 that can defeat most all soft body armor, and its dirt cheep. I think most officers are more concerned about getting shot in the first place than what they are being shot at with.

22

okay found it for you guys…

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=5&f=4&t=10865

its a long read (15 pages), bit it demonstrates what civilian owners of the pistol are doing with legal SS192 rounds.

23

If it can penetrate body armor plates, wouldn’t this mean that body armor is on its way to becoming obsolete? Great against explosives, but mostly just a liability in an actual gunfight?

24

Not at all. The stuff available to civilians does penetrate the lower-rated armor, but so do a whole host of hunting rounds. The 5.7 is just a new twist on the old 'small bullet, REALLY fast trick. The old Russian 7.62x25 does about as well as the civilian 5.7 at penetrating armor, and that has been around for a long time.

25
      • Let me get this straight: a police department is worried about a pistol that can penetrate body armor at… 300 yards???
  • There’s a couple other revolvers/one pistol in 17HMR that will penetrate level II armor with lead-core bullets at close range (<30 feet) but they don’t have enough power to do much damage on the other side: S&W and Taurus make long-barrel 17HMR revolvers, and Accu-Tek makes a 9-shot semiauto 17HMR pistol. The 5.7 round goes around 400 ft-lbs of energy while the 17HMR goes about 180 ft-lbs out of a pistol.
    ~
26

It can’t penetrate the plates anyway. It can penetrate soft armor. The hard plate inserts are designed to stop even larger steel core rifle rounds. (Depending on the plate)
Like I said earlier, these rounds penetrate soft armor with no problem, but wont go through a plate.