NATO PDW Trials: The Forbidden Saga of "MP7 vs P90" [ Collab with Oxide ]

This video is brought to you by Slate Black Industries. For grips and accessories, visit slateblackindustries.com Now many have said that the NATO PDW trials or personal defense weapon trials were a way of arming rear echelon Western European troops in defense of a Russian paratrooper invasion. Now today we're here to challenge current ideas on the NATO PDW trials. With actual reports from the trials that have never been delved into before. Welcome to 9 Hole Reviews. Some of these misleading ideas could be based on rumors passed down, but today we'll analyze an actual NATO Army Armaments Group or NAAG trial report from 2002. And coupled with our friend Oxide who helped us run tests on Soviet era body armor with a P90 and an MP7, I think we'll gain a better understanding of exactly what happened. Okay, to fill you in. Currently, the belief within the firearms community is that NATO trials were held to find a weapon that was lighter, smaller, easily packable for rear echelon troops, and fired an armor-piercing cartridge to penetrate Russian armor. For said rear echelon troops to defend themselves against an impending Russian paratrooper attack on the Western European lines. Most notably, the P90 was pit against an MP7 as a NATO quest for best PDW and future weapons for special operations. Now while there is a shred of truth in that statement or that idea or concept, these misconceptions are inaccurate. For a few points. The NATO PDWs, the trials, were equally as important for the weapon system as it was for the cartridge. In fact, it was more important for the cartridge, I would say, because that's how you establish a standardized agreement, a STANAG. The cartridges weren't actually very good at penetrating Russian paratrooper armor. In fact, they didn't penetrate them at all. There was more than just a 4.7 and a 5.7 cartridge that was being tested in the initial phase of the PDW trials. It did not seem like it was a fair fight from the beginning, and it lacked U.S. involvement. And as a bonus at the end, we're theorizing that there was an unlikely beneficiary to the PDW program that we'll talk about at the end of this video. So first off, the trials were primarily designed to confirm and standardize a PDW cartridge, not a PDW weapon, and the cartridge testing consisted of two phases. First phase, the trials were hosted at Fort Halstead in the UK in September 2000, and phase one actually started with four candidates. So you've got your 5.7x28, you've got your 4.6x30, the FN, the H, and K cartridges. But then we also had the British .224 BOZ, which was a 5.56 projectile necked into a 9mm casing, supplied by the Civil Defense Supply Company to rechamber the standardized 9mm weapons that were in NATO. Remember this, we'll discuss more in a bit. And then finally, the German firm Sommer und Ockenfuss submitted a .224 type of ammunition that, quite frankly, we don't know much about and presumably was unlikely to be considered because they only had a Thompson contender to fire it. The second phase was conducted under the French Directory for Land Armaments Programs at Bourges, and it was a detailed testing for then the 5.7x28 and 4.6x30 after they determined that these two were going to be the final contenders. And we'll delve into the conclusions at a later part of the video, but there are some highlights that we could clarify off the bat. The declaration here is that some of these were deductions made on logical conclusions based on the trial results and historical timelines that we've been able to obtain. So let's get into that. Now, the PDW cartridges were set up to replace the 9mm cartridge. The program itself was not necessarily set up to pierce Russian paratrooper body armor, and the PDW program trials reports nowhere does it ever say Russian paratrooper body armor. CrySat? Yes. We'll talk about that more. It was a program that was deliberately to move and slowly phase out the 9mm cartridge with a new NATO STANAG, a standardized agreement. And the idea behind Now, I cannot underemphasize the importance and how much of a bigger deal it is to have a STANAG for cartridges rather than a STANAG for weapons. In a time of war, using a standardized ammunition amongst allies is exceedingly important for an alliance to support each other. It's far more important than to standardize your weapons, which no one in the alliance would ever agree upon. Now, in the NAG report, it clearly states that the French and the Belgians were wanting to entirely replace 9mm NATO with 5.7x28 over time. They actually got the cartridge proofed according to NATO MOPI standards, the manual of proof and inspection, and drafted the STANAG and were about to distribute the new STANAG when Germany at this point blocked the initiative by announcing the 4.6x30mm development. This is to foreshadow at a later point some political squabbles. Now, it's very clear to us that both the 5.7 and the 4.6 fail to pierce Russian paratrooper armor, an NIJ level 4 equivalent. And in working with Ben over at Oxide, he clearly demonstrates that both the NATO PDW calibers fail to penetrate just a standard 6.5mm Russian armor of its time. Now, some may argue that maybe NATO didn't know of the Russian armor's existence, which is unlikely. This same family of Russian body armor has been in use since the first Chechen war, and quite frankly, its predecessor was being in use in Afghanistan in the 70s. Even the Soldier of Fortune magazine did a penetration test on it in the 80s, so it's quite clear what armor the Russian paratroopers were using. Now, yes, Russian paratrooper doctrine of the era was to drop their APCs, their armor personnel carriers, so armored vehicles, with all of their gear and armor within it, and then Russian paratroopers would jump slick with no armor, kit up when they got to the APC wherever it dropped, and so meaning that there is a very small window to fight an unarmored group of Russian paras with a PDW. However, this is unfeasible to plant an entire NATO alliance caliber with the hope that your troops are basically going to have to kill the enemy paratroopers, which are unarmored and a 9mm could do the very same thing with it, within the 30 or 60 minutes that they need to regroup and kit up around their APCs. Furthermore, in Oxide's test, he actually took an M16 with a 20-inch barrel and shot M855A1, a much higher velocity standard 5.56 NATO cartridge that we currently use, and that couldn't penetrate the Russian paratrooper armor. significantly better than green tip. No dice. The 6v5 armor is pretty good for being half a decade older than I am. It is a pretty uncomfortable thought to think that millions of communist conscripts would have streamed across the Iron Curtain with sets of this mass-produced armor. You cannot expect something that shoots a smaller, slower, and lighter PDW cartridge with a weaker penetrator that it could defeat the same type of armor. So this myth that the PDW program trials were designed to penetrate Russian paratrooper body armor really should be laid to rest. However, the program did specify a Krysat-type armor that was using a 1.5mm titanium plate, which was designed after one of the weakest Russian armors that would stop a 9mm NATO cartridge at the time. And indeed, it would appear that the initial requirements for a Krysat armor penetration under the original solicitation, ACT25-303, was more of a barrier to bar or weed out 9mm weapons, and seeking a lighter caliber that relied on velocity rather than mass to incapacitate, and still have some armor-piercing characteristics. Now there are also suggestions that there were some political influences in Brussels at this moment. Go figure. It is well documented that the 5.7x28 does not penetrate armor as well as the 4.6x30. But this isn't necessarily because the cartridge fails, but rather the construction of the bullet. These black tips, the armor-piercing cartridges that FN sells, particularly are designed with a steel tip with an aluminum core and a copper jacket, whereas the H&K 4.6 APSX is a full steel penetrator with a copper jacket. I've got to emphasize that the 5.7 only has a steel tip that performs a base penetration on any armor, and the 4.6 APSX is purely a penetrator, and that's it, with a jacket around it, providing little to no expansion or fragmentation. The 4.6 APSX is almost entirely made of hardened steel, and thus is a much better armor penetrator than 5.7, but that better penetration doesn't help either PDW in this case. I managed to score a 4.6 round in nearly the exact same location as the previous hit, and it still wasn't able to penetrate. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you only hit Ivan's armor, you couldn't kill him with an entire mag from either weapon. Now one could presume that the Belgian 5.7x28 SS190 was designed to barely penetrate the Krysat armor that was designated by the committee to bar the 9mm from being re-adopted, whereas the German APSX, the 4.6mm, was designed by someone who honestly only wanted to penetrate any armor that they envisioned that the trial would throw at it, because they didn't really know what the Krysat specifications were for the armor. The trial reports on the two calibers actually corroborates that the 5.7 was better at causing flesh damage, and the 4.6 was better at penetrating armor. I'd like to remind you again that neither armor penetrates the standard-issued Soviet paratrooper armor, but this was a test being done on Krysat armor that would be more effective to weed out 9mm than being a very good type of armor. Now as Projet Nonnant, or Project 90 or the P90, took ground in 1990, the US had just adopted the 9mm Beretta M9 in 1985 as the standard joint-services pistol, and it was engulfed in the terror by the time the NATO PDW trials were going on in 2002. The US had no interest in switching calibers to fight Russians who weren't invading. Now as an editorial note, I realize that my background as a US Army Ordnance Officer may seem like it would skew my perceptions on what I'm about to talk about, but in working deeply under NATO when I was in Europe, I realized that many effective NATO actions are in fact done with the involvement of the United States. Like it or not, the initial standardization of or STANAG of the 7.62x51 NATO was due to the United States. The British, the French, and the Belgians all favored the 280 BRIT, which was promptly shut down. The STANAG of the 5.56 NATO, direct involvement of the US. In contrast to the 5.56 and 7.62, throughout the trials for the PDW cartridges, there seemed to be a serious lack of American involvement. The testing was all completed in Fort Halstead in the UK, or Bourges in France. The initial requirement for AC-225 in June 1997 were based off of a European staff target for the PDW in May 1996. A major lack of US involvement suggests that they would likely not receive US support, and preparing NATO for using a 5.7x28 cartridge, merely 12 years after the US just refitted to use 9x19 Luger. Remember, typically the US sways NATO to use America's cartridge, not the other way around. So who won? This is an interesting outcome. The NAAG report discusses at length that the 5.7x28 wins in terminal ballistics, but the 4.6x30 is a better penetrator, but is slightly more accurate. Which makes sense if you really dive into the bullet construction. SS190, the 5.7, is a multi-alloy construction, so it should be able to fragment or tumble a lot easier. So here was our shot in the panel, there was our exit, right about in there is where it tumbled and went backwards. 12.5 inches after penetrating a level 3A vest, pretty amazing. Whereas, the 4.6 is essentially a jacketed steel penetrator. A little small bit of steel with a copper jacket on it. Well, it penetrates, it goes through armor easier. Again, not particularly sparky footage, but 4.6 easily penetrated three plates, leaving an around 25mm hole through the clay. Small notation also on the 5.7 is that it failed a chemical submersion test. Basically, the study group submerged the 5.7 into fuel before retrieving it and firing it out of the P90, and it would lead to malfunctions. This makes sense because the P90's rotary magazine system requires the cartridge to have dry lubrication on it, and when you strip that dry lubrication, it probably has trouble rotating into a feeding position causing a misfeed, or during extraction causing a failure to extract. This report also strangely and very specifically notates that it is a weapon system problem and not the cartridge issue itself. Now, at the end of the trials, the chairman even notes that the initial PDW specifications were not very realistic. However, he also noted that once national interests are at stake, it is no surprise that a consensus could be difficult to reach knowing the consequences of such an important choice. The bottom line, Europeans squabbled and the US weren't going to help make a decision, so the PDW working group was then disbanded and no STANAG was achieved for a single PDW cartridge to replace the 9x19 cartridge. Following the PDW trials, neither of the PDW cartridges were ever standardized into the NATO supply system until 2020. Under STANAG 4509, both of the 5.7x28 and the 4.6x30 calibers were standardized into the NATO logistical system. 18 years after the round 2 trials, NATO decided it could not pick one. But if we were to look back at the initial intent of the PDW program, with an express objective to replace the 9mm cartridge with a single future caliber, it failed to replace a 9mm cartridge and it failed to narrow logistical supplies to a single caliber. So who gained the most out of the NATO PDW projects? Ironically, the NATO PDW trials led to the Russians to kick off their own set of PDW trials in developing the PP2000, a 9x19 PDW that the Russians were, more importantly, able to develop a 7N31 9mm armor-piercing caliber, making up for the lack of penetration of 9mm cartridges. Remember how we talked about the other calibers initially considered in phase 1 of the NATO PDW trials? The UK submitted the .224 BOS, which was actually submitted with a Glock 17 and an MP5 that was retrofitted to fire the .224 BOS. In other words, this caliber, designed on a 9mm base, would be able to accommodate NATO members' current arsenal to retrofit their 9mm weapons with just a barrel swap. Although this has its inherent longevity problems, it would have been the easiest and cheapest solution to retrofit current 9mm weapons with an armor-piercing capacity. The biggest problem with the 5.7 and the 4.6 is that they're not logistically available, which, as an early PDW, the M1 carbine also faced the same problems. If the US didn't go ahead and spam the M1 carbine, that would have been a difficult boutique round like the 4.6 and the 5.7 available to anyone. The British .224 BOS partially solves this problem by giving nations an option to retrofit 9mm weapons with a new and crazy looking PDW cartridge. Well, the Russians, who aren't stupid, decided to accomplish the same by embedding a similar weight penetrator into a polymer jacketed Sable core into their 9mm PDW that would not require a barrel swap to switch between normal and armor-piercing 9x19. Despite the increased maintenance issues when deployed, they actually also developed a 7N21 that runs at a lower velocity. The 7N21 is still being used by the Russians in their Vityaz and their PPK-20 type submachine guns to achieve a much greater armor-piercing and barrier-piercing results at shorter distances as needed to currently supplied submachine guns in the Russian supply system. Good job, NATO. Anyways, this has been an exhaustive research process, and in light of keeping the record straight, I wanted to send out a call for action or open the forum to everybody out there. As I've had continuous chats with Ian over at Forgotten Weapons on this subject, we recognize that first-person accounts on the NATO PDW working groups are actually severely lacking to understand what exactly happened during this time frame. Now, one of the main problems that we run into is that we simply don't have the original contract requirements or contact with the original people who were on the trials. So if you do know someone, if you are someone who was on the trials, feel free, please, we ask you, please email us in the emails in the description, either to Ian at Forgotten Weapons or us at 9Hole Reviews. And for now, I hope you enjoyed this. We'll have more on the MP7 and the P90 down the road. As far as this goes, we'll see you on the range. Subscribe today on www.SlateBlackIndustries.com