MwRYum
Major
Does it really matter when the PLA simply use 12.7mm from the get-go?
Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter Gollevainen
- Start date
The NIJ Level 3 standard is to fire M80 rounds from a 22-inch weapon and the depression should be less than 44mm, but the plate has already made a depression of 45.7mm when subjected to M80 rounds fired from a 16-inch weapon, which means that it is 100% non-compliant with the NIJ Level 3 standard.
Meanwhile, in the NIJ test, the 4th, 5th and 6th shots were allowed to fire closely together, which further illustrates the quality of the plate.
The Russian public provide 6B45 can withstand 3 M855A1 strikes in the same area without being penetrated (See Oxide video ), although the two plates do not have the same ballistic rating, I would like to illustrate that a good ballistic plate should be able to withstand consecutive strikes in close areas.
EVEN IF this plate meets NIJ level 3 standards, it would still have trouble blocking the M855 (which would probably require NIJ level 3.5), which is grossly underprotected for the modern military.
The conclusion that their armour won't offer sufficient protection against the PLA 5.8×42mm DBP-191 (they talked about the DBP10 which is the older round) is probably still true. I'd argue that their plates likely don't even hold up to the level 3 (3+ when ICW) NIJ standard from what we've seen so far. But still you're correct that the test isn't 100% conclusive, they actually didn't follow many aspects of the proper NIJ test procedure. They uploaded 2 new longer uncut videos after that 12 min summary video.
It's sort of all over the place and poorly organised but I'll write the best summary I can from what I saw.
(0101.06)
For starters they needed to test on many more plates/panels for it to meet the NIJ standard (Lin Ping-yu, the Taiwanese councilor, was probably unable to "smuggle" all those plates required to be fair). If you look at Table 5 below which I took from the official NIJ 0101.06 body armour report, they would've needed at least 8 standalone level 3A soft armour panels, 4 standalone level 3 hard armour plates, and (not listed in the table) 4 ICW (in-conjunction-with, which means hard armour mixed/reinforced with soft armour in this case) armour which is an additional 4 soft and hard panels/plates.
For the level 3A soft armour (Kevlar) they tested it standalone twice, 1st with a 9mm round (uncut vid 2 @4:10) which is the incorrect test round (see ammo chart below) because according to the NIJ you're supposed to use the .357 SIG round which has more penetration and velocity on average than 9mm. The 2nd round (.44 Mag, uncut vid 2 @5:23) they used was correct though.
Neither of those rounds perforated (did a complete penetration) but according to the NIJ (if you look at Table 5 I linked) they're supposed to shoot both rounds 6 times PER PANEL for 4 DIFFERENT PANELS (totaling 48 shots and 8 panels). So they didn't even use anywhere close to the amount of required rounds and panels to officially meet the NIJ standard.
For the level 3 hard armour plate, they didn't use the required amount of plates and rounds again. But this time they also tested M855 green tip which the level 3 plate isn't even designed to protect against (summary vid @4:57) so obviously that round perforated the plate. They did also run tests with the correct test round (7.62mm) against the level 3 plate twice (once in the summary vid @3:47, the other time in uncut vid 1 @20:16), but these results are the more inconclusive ones that they definitely needed to test more. I say this because while the 7.62 in the summary vid did cause significant backface deformation (the BFS (backface signature, Fig 2 below) was measured at 45.7mm which is above the 44mm threshold), if the BFS is only above that 44mm threshold in less than 20% of the total shots fired (24 for level 3) it would still count as a pass (Section 7.8.8 with the highlighted text below). So while those 2 shots tested already don't look good, they'd have to test many more times to be conclusive.
Now for the ICW armour that they tested when they added the soft armour panel to the hard plate, bringing the protection level to 3+, the M855 green tip ammo is appropriate. They tested it twice, once in uncut vid 2 @17:29 and once in the summary vid @7:23. It perforated the armour in the summary video which would constitute a failure to meet the level 3+ NIJ standard but the shot was also very close to the previous improper M855 perforation on the hard plate they only just reinforced (as Hvang said). So while it's not exactly looking good for their armour, we can't fully draw any 100% confident conclusions about their ICW armour yet.
Also note that in an actual conflict, I'd assume that they'll probably use ICW over standalone armour since (correct me if I'm wrong) most somewhat developed militaries do and also the average range of engagement would be further away than the range used in the NIJ tests (which it looks like they did adhere to in the videos, Fig 8 below). Also the angle of incidence/entry angle of the bullets on the armour and impact zones would be inconsistent in real combat whereas for the NIJ tests they have approximately set entry angles and impact zones for each test shot (Table 7 and Fig 14).
Still like I said, the conclusions while not concrete are most likely correct, the PLA's 5.8×42mm DBP-191 is bigger, heavier, and likely faster than the M855 green tip they used which is concerning for separatist Taiwanese especially if their armour looks like it might not even meet the 20 year old NIJ standards as advertised.
My understanding of the video (I don't know Chinese) was they were testing to see if Taiwanese armour would stop DBP10.
The video does not show whether the armour (plate in combination with 3A backer) can as that area/tile of the plate was already hit. The shot at 7:20 is little more than 25mm from the prior hit (judging from molle straps being 25mm). In NIJ tests, the 3 shots are near the edge of a 100mm circle.
M855 from a 16 inch barrel going through both the plate and the 3A backer would strongly indicate DPB10 from a QBZ95 (also with a steel penetrator but going faster) also penetrating. But they tested the compromised plate section with a 3A backer. That is why I say the test is not conclusive.
(Also the M80 test was done with the plate alone.)
Do we know what level the standred PLA plate is? from reading the previous posts, it looks like Taiwans plates wont hold up against the QBZ-191.
I'd like to know how the PLA armour performs too, but I don't think there's anything concrete online about them yet (if there is I just haven't found it). From what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, the PLA hasn't used body armour in training as extensively as most developed militaries yet but from speculation that I've read both here and from other places, I get the impression that it might not be very good either. I'd love to be surprised and shown otherwise though.
Just for reference, commercial boards from different Chinese manufacturers tested by Russians. Here's video , and video .
These plates successfully stopped 5.45*39 BS (7N24) armor piercing rounds and 7.62*54R B-32 armor piercing incendiary rounds. One of the Russians provided the price, which was around 3,000 rubles, which converts to RMB is equivalent of 10 Big Mac combos. I mean PLA can get a good plate even if they pay out of pocket.
MwRYum
Major
We know they've comparable items and CCTV7 have run a few episodes showcasing body armour undergo live fire tests, but as to what current model the PLA using now as standard issues be tested extensively by outside party? Now that's an unknown, as far as we can tell.
Made-in-China ballistic plates are known to export to US market, if it's trash we'd have long heard about it.
How well did they peform?
Damn okay those look pretty good especially for that price.
Yeah fair enough, I didn't doubt that we have the capability to easily manufacture good armour, I was just unsure what a comparably priced plate to what the PLA uses would be. But seeing the cheap ones Shadow just linked perform that well has definitely set my uncertainty to rest.