HWin NIJ Level IIIA Soft Armor Review

Hi everyone, welcome back to the range. My name is Matt known as the king of armor destruction and the armor wizard zap zap got a body armor test for you all today trying to clear out all of the level 3a soft or rigid pistol armor that I have piling up in my basement so we can get back to our level 3 plus and 4. So I have a go big or go home for you today this monstrous 18 by 18 panel is from hwin this is a flexible 3a panel it weighs 3.2 pounds and is approximately 13 millimeters thick or 510 thousandths in full transparency hwin contacted me and asked to perform a demo or review on their panel I'm not sure why they've sent an 18 by 18 other than they wanted me to get as many shots as possible on a single sample they do offer 8 by 10 10 by 12 11 by 14 etc here at my channel we're you know blended on the heavy side of data versus entertainment I try to throw some dad jokes here and there but sometimes they're not very funny so I try to stick to a lot of nha constants since this is soft pistol armor we shoot at 7 to 10 feet we have a pro chrono pal digital dlx that we use to capture the velocity because that is key in determining an armor's performance we also use a giant clay briefcase filled with aroma plastelina number one I think today I actually have the off-brand plastelina clay that will do nicely for us it's about 80 to 85 degrees outside today and sunny and humid I'm going to probably be covered in sweat by the time I'm done today basically we're trying to find the upper limits of our 3a we're going to shoot a bunch of random threats at it I have a spreadsheet here at the beginning that I kind of foreshadow all the threats and we fill it out at the end with the velocity if we capture it and whether it penetrated or not I'm not sure if I'll need all of those spots that I've marked on our plate down there but again per the nij I want to keep our shot spacing at a fair hit standard so that's two inches apart from each other typically with polyethylene you can stack rounds pretty close to each other but we want to keep two inches and two inches from the edge up first I have our cz scorpion evo 3s1 sbr this has a 7.72 inch barrel on it we get some pretty good velocities out of the three nine millimeter loads that I have here I have l7a1 there's 124 grain full metal jacket going pretty fast I have our liberty civil defense 50 grain all copper round known for speed and known for penetrating types of aramid fiber polyethylene presents more of a problem for it and then I have some 115 grain black tip imi samson loads pretty much the black tip just means that it's a higher pressure take that shot last our liberty civil defense second and then our l7a1 first we'll mark a lot of these shots on the plate and then after a few we'll go down and check out what they did pretty good velocity out there I'll just walk these right down in the line on the right hand side nice this is where things get a little spicy for our 3a I brought out our 16 inch arv same shot order imi last liberty civil defense second and the l7a1 first we'll place these to the left those last shots and now for my 5.7 fans we bring out our kel-tec p50 this is a neat little top loading the top the action breaks apart right here and we use our fnp 90 magazines this has an 8 inch barrel we have some very common 5.7 loads here we have the american eagle tmj 40 grain incremental jacket we have ss 197 sr that is the sporting round a 40 grain v max lead core we have s we have ss 198 lf that is a 27 grain otm with an aluminum core there is no steel inside of it the that is a 2020 lot all the 2019 and newer lots have a cantilever I haven't figured out why they added a cantilever other than maybe bullet identification and then finally we have vanguard outfitters black dragon fang that is a 34 grain solid copper round going pretty darn fast although I think I might have gotten a bum lot because some of the velocities on it have been pretty low we'll take that shot last take a couple shots of ss 198 lf so the american eagle tmj first we're just going to walk in these you know in a line straight up and down yeah really bad velocity on that american eagle tmj yup now the ss 197 I've been noticing lately the american eagle tmj has not been cycling the action good velocity off that now the ss 198 let me go check the shot placement all right and finally the black dragon fang will be by the h on h when on left side and now for a somewhat rare but interesting threat in 5.7 this is factory sb193 this is a 60 61 grain projectile the original lots that I had were 55 grain I think they up the bullet weight to help it cycle in our 5.7 typically the 55 grains never have an issue in our longer barrel lengths this bullet is kind of peculiar in that it has a bi-metal jacket that attracts a magnet but it has a lead core given that it is subsonic meaning below the sound barrier it has some kind of weird ability to penetrate soft armor even rigid we have a kestrel 22 added to our p50 here I forget how much this is going to drop at this distance versus what I have sighted in so I'll try to place this right in the center 1040 so we worst up sonic you didn't hear that supersonic crack in that bullet forgive all the marks on the plate but I believe we have all their hits on here here was our l7a1 from the cz the liberty civil defense then the imi then the 16 inch the same l7a1 the liberty civil defense then the imi then we went over to our 5.7 here was our ss197 the 198 shot number one and shot number two and here was our black dragon fang and then our sb193 there's plenty of spots left on this plate that we can throw a couple more hits on here although like I said with pistol rated armor there's not a lot of threats I can throw at it I mean I can throw some fort scott munitions and some other things at it but it and not a lot of people have those rounds uh-oh raggy we have penetrations from our black dragon fang our sb193 our second round of ss198 our first round did not penetrate I'll have to double check the american eagle looks like our liberty civil defense from the 16 inch penetrated this is some weird constructions I've seen this before with this plate they use some foam on the back as a media to help control that blunt force trauma then there's this rigid piece of plastic in here not sure what that's supposed to do I don't know if that helps with the controlling the polyethylene from stretching too far but we'll pull all these off here in a minute and confirm our penetrations when we do our tear down but there goes to show you our 5.7 with the right load even that subsonic load is pretty darn dangerous against our soft armor even the liberty civil defense going fast enough can do the job too before we bring out our last threat for today I wanted to shoot two more 5.7 loads at it but I wanted to reduce the velocity so we've got our palmetto state armory 5.7 rock this is a 4.6 inch barrel this particular gun produces the lowest velocities out of all the 5.7 guns I've tested simply because the barrel length is the shortest at 4.6 inches versus the 4.75 from the 5.7 this is r&r weapons systems r37x for expanding it's an all copper load good at expanding like our spear gold dot and penetrating to some pretty good depths in ballistics gel get lined up here that velocity seems off for some reason take a second shot here much better velocity right around 1900 feet per second that time now our final threat for our soft armor I don't have a 44 magnum but fear not Jamie P he rides me a lot in all my videos about getting 44 magnum I have ordered a desert eagle six inch barrel in 44 mag to do some testing on in the future but today I have 50 action express the big guy now again this is outside the purview of the NIJ with the AE slings heavier lead bullets going as fast if not faster than 44 magnum so I have a 300 grain spear gold dot right here and a 300 grain and jacketed soft point I do believe this is an IMI bullet that they first offered when the desert eagle came online I will take the jacketed soft point shot second the gold dot first in our prior testing most panels stop this but the back face is what becomes a concern and this thing has been murdering my shooting bag the muzzle blast pretty good velocity off that and now our jacketed soft point smoking this is where we're gonna see some real back face our gold dot shot was right there our JSP was there our two shots of our 37 were there again this plate is big enough that we can continue to put hits on it especially nine millimeter it is really good at stopping those type of rounds but we probably get bored trying to get something to penetrate uh-oh raggy looks like our second round of our 37x penetrated this particular plate but both of our 50 action express loads were stopped now if you've watched any of my other soft armor you'll note that that 50 AE produces some pretty heavy back face again this is just a representation this guy 35 millimeters this guy over here 37 millimeters this particular plastic material seems to help control our back face although I'm not sure how well this would do in a really flexible panel that you would wear all day this might hinder some of its flexibility but interesting of our 3a panels that we've tested so far very controllable back face with the 50 AE although this particular design let more of our 5.7 stuff through now for everyone's favorite the tear down we tear our plates apart to see what is inside of them we've got a foam right here this does help with blunt force trauma but to what effect I do not know typically a lot of the higher end manufacturers use a higher density foam this one's better than most it's got a decent amount of thickness there this plastic layer here again guessing it's to help with blunt force trauma and help keep the polyethylene from stretching too far we have our confirmed penetrations we'll list those in the spreadsheet but you know it was the liberty civil defense the american eagle tmj the black dragon fang the second round of ss 198 lf our sb 193 and then the second round of our one our r37x there's just a bunch of layers of polyethylene here i'm not sure if the fibers or the layers are directional or if they're making them is it or if they're rotating each layer it's really hard to see these look like the layers are running this way the fibers and the same on these ones my biggest point for better performance on any polyethylene that's soft is that we need to sew the outer perimeter or at least so the corners so that the longer you can keep all these layers together the better it will perform these come apart rather easily see if we can find those big slugs here should be in here somewhere here's our ss 198 lf if it deforms like this where it pushes the front over mushrooms over it typically will get stopped here's our nine millimeter load that's stopped pretty much just smushed right over here are big two fatty 50ae loads the gold dot actually makes it further into the panel than the jacketed saw point maybe because it expands earlier on it's pretty neat and how this material is able to slow down and stop bullets well there you have it richard at hwin i'd say your plate didn't do too bad i probably didn't need the huge 18 by 18 panel 210 by 12 probably would have better served us for our ballistic testing but again polyethylene is showing that it can take a lot of hits and normally in close proximity only when we shot some obscure threats at them that are outside of the purview of the nij will be able to penetrate this particular plate again i always offer constructive criticism towards the manufacturer or reseller of these plates to better their products based again on my experience which is all redneck science i have no doctorate or any kind of advanced engineering degree in any of this material science but it's just all based on experience we definitely need to somehow sew or contain the outside edges of these soft panels so that when they take hits the layers can stay together because when the layers stay together they stop more rounds well it's time for me to say sayonara and get the heck out of here at the end of all my videos i take a moment to thank all those who help make these possible number one is my patreon and subscribe star fans i have a link tree in the description below so i'm going to click that and look at any of those ways to contact me or support me that is appreciated number two is richard over hwin again in full transparency contacted me and asked for me to do a demo on his products i like testing all different manufacturers so that we can find the best of the best or if somebody comes out with a new material that we can test it and see how it compares to current technology of course number three is you all for watching until next time i'll catch you at the range