Can this RTS Armor Survive 45-70?! - TGC Reviews

Alright guys, before we get into the armor destruction video, I just have a little bit of background information for you. After we completed the destruction test, we spoke with RTS Armor about the destruction we caused in this video, and they were actually really happy to hear that our plates were able to withstand 4570. And as such, I need you guys to do me a favor and just keep that in mind, the rounds that we used were about three times the muzzle energy that the plates are rated for. So it's definitely not rated for that caliber, guys. Good job RTS. Anyway, enjoy the video. And before we get into today's video, I want to give a quick shout out to Axel Ear Pro. These guys make some of the best stuff that I'm aware of. This is the Ghost Strike Extreme, the GS Extreme, and if you use our link in the description, you get a massive discount. I think it's somewhere between 25 and 50% off these units. They're Bluetooth, they are sound amplifying, sound deadening, they've got different tips to fit different ear sizes, and overall, they're just rad. So go check out them, the Axel GS Extreme, at the link down in the description. That would be greatly appreciated so that we can continue bringing videos like this. Now, they say that this will take multiple .30-06 Blacktip armor-piercing rounds. We actually don't have any of that, however, we do have a menagerie of firearms to throw at this, and multiple plates. So what we're going to do is work through the guns here. First, we've got the HK SP5, it's sporting one of those brand new Viridian green dot optics up there, that's cool. It's got Magpul furniture, that's a neat gun. Then we've got down here the 429 PD from Smith & Wesson, that is an ultra-lightweight, scary lightweight .44 Magnum. Then we've got Ben's .500 Magnum with the Longboy barrel on there, that's kind of our pistol caliber things. Then we are going to move up, and we were kind of debating how we want to do this, however, we do know that speed is what kills armor. Speed is how rounds go through. So, with that in mind, we are then going to jump to Ben's .45-70, this is an 1895 SBL with some, he says, some hand-loaded stuff that's really hot. It's factory, but it's really hot. It's really, really hot factory loads. And then we're going to go to the Kel-Tec N556, got two different types, including 855A1, which is a penetrator round. It's not armor-piercing, but it is a penetrator round, so we're excited to see how that goes. And then we're going to step up to my Garand. Now this is a gun I've actually never shot, which is exciting, so we're breaking it out today. We don't have black tip, however, we do have some .30-06, and we're going to see what happens here. We're just going to work our way through it. We've got one of these plates in a carrier downrange, and we're going to see how it goes. OK, we are at about 12 yards. We are going to start this test with the HK SP5. This is about a 9-inch barrel, just shy of that. We're shooting 115 grain full-metal jacket ammo. This optic has been zeroed, but I will still have to hold a little bit on the high side of this range. So let's get to it. All right, here we go. Here we go. Slap. Drum mags are great when you're trying to shoot one round. Hey! All right, we've got an alternate camera here. Woo-hoo! Where'd you hit? So, I hit it about where I was aiming, so not too bad. That's positive. Yes. Off to a good start. I held just a touch high for this distance. And it looks like we have a hole in the carrier, which is good. It should go through the carrier. We hope that the carrier is not... What's going on? Do you want to pull that thing out of there? Yeah, I'm going to pull it out. I'm just observing. There is a little bit of white. I'm guessing that's from the ceramic coming back out of the front of the hole. Okay. So, let's tear her open and see what we got. Oh, that would help if I pulled the right Velcro, you know. That's a lot of Velcro. Yeah, it is. Well, you know, if this thing is supposed to protect a very specific part of your body, you really don't want it moving, so I don't blame them for putting all that in there. Whoa. That's interesting. For not having any spall, there's... Okay, this is going to be an interesting test. That's jacket. They say almost no spalling, and that's... That's clearly jacket. That's definitely jacketing. It looks like in this area is where it can't... Oh, look, this is sharp right here. Yeah. It's coming out. Another piece that fell down. And that's with just a 115 9mm. This is going to get interesting. Let's go. Hell, yeah. All right. Let's go. And there is back face deformation, by the way. Oh, there is a little bit? Yeah, you can feel it. Let's see if we can see it. Hold that like that. Yes, you can see it a bit. Okay. Let's keep rolling. So after an interesting result, we've decided to step it up a notch. This is .44 Magnum 180 grain jacketed hollow points. It's PMC bronze, and they say 1,750 feet per second muzzle velocity. We'll see. This is coming out of a .329 PD. This is an airway revolver, so this shouldn't be too pleasant. So we got this gun in for review, but we have not shot it yet, and this is the first round. So let's all enjoy Ben's pain. Okay. I am very curious to see if we get any spalling or penetration. All right. I'm going to flinch in 3, 2, 1. Ow! Did I hit the ground in front of the carrier? You sure did. That's because I suck at shooting, and so John made me get another round. I got hit by a rock. Damn. Yeah. I pro. We're I pro at the range. All right, we're going to try that again, and this time I'm not going to embarrass myself and not count down either. I'm just going to take my time and shoot like you're supposed to. Yeah, that's a thing. I think that was a good hit. That hit the carrier. How was that shooting experience? Surprisingly not too bad. It definitely is jarring, but it's not nearly as bad. That's why I didn't flinch in the second round because I knew what to expect. I did get a lot of, like, blast back in the face. So this thing does spray. There's also a lot of unburnt powder in the barrel right now, which I find kind of surprising. EMC bronze. Okay, what happened? I hit the carrier the second time. Way low because, you know, I don't know this gun, and I also flinch a lot. So let's take a look at it. Oh, my goodness. Oh, let's get in there. That's a lot. So we have lead core, we have jacket, and we have more jacket. I don't think we're going to get all the way to 30-06. We're going to find out. I mean, we're going to shoot it. We're probably going to need a second plate for this, though. We'll probably grab the second plate because that's less than ideal if you're trying to protect yourself with this, but so far the spalling has not made it through the carrier. Yeah. And has been mostly, question mark, upward inflection inside the plate. Flip it over and let's see for... Definitely a bigger bulge than 9mm. Hang on, let me get this low angle. You guys can kind of see that, like... Whoop. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So definite deformation and... Wow. Okay. What's next, Ben? I promise you guys I won't flinch with the 500. Next one's up. We have the Smith & Wesson Model 500. These are 300-grain XTPs. It's loaded by arms core, so this is not super hot stuff, but it's what we had on hand. So this is an 8 3⁄8-inch barrel, so we should get a decent amount of velocity out of this round. Let us see. Hey, John, what did I say to the audience? Something about how you're going to miss. Yeah, I'm definitely going to flinch on this one. Good hit. You know what's funny is that that was not as absurd as the .44. It feels a little warm. You said the carrier feels warm? I don't know if it's just that we don't have sun, and it's under shade anyway, so it can't be the sun, but the top of the carrier is warm. Here, let me feel that. I'm pulling on the wrong side. No, up here, where I hit. This is where I hit, right here. Oh, okay. Yeah, maybe. Let's see. Yeah, buddy! Oh, boy. That's pretty bad. Oh, boy. Okay, so this tore the hell out of the SPAL coating. We have a piece of jacket right here, a big piece of jacket. I'm trying to cut myself. Ooh, piece of jacket. So this is our actual impact point, and it basically bounced everything back out. It was leaned back just a bit. Yeah, but you can see down in here all the stuff on the inside. I see broken ceramic down in here. There's actually a pretty large cavity with a lot of broken ceramic down there. I don't know if you can see. Kind of. It's tough to see. So you're saying that it went in here and just burst out the top here. Oof. Why don't you pick that carrier up? I have an idea. Pick the carrier up and see if you can dump anything out. I'm going to look to see what's in there. Oh, look at this. Did something come through, perhaps? It looks like something came up and out. Maybe the high speed will reveal that something came through there. We're not 100%, so we're not going to claim that. Oh, yeah. Dump that out. Now, that could be from the other ones, but there is a significant amount of shite inside there. Yeah, there's a lot of crap in here. So we're going to rattle, rattle, rattle. Oh, yeah. All the jacket. OK, so we understand that these pistol cartridges and magnum pistol cartridges are doing some hefty damage to this plate. Let's see a back deformation. That's significant. Oh, that is. I mean, that's rib-breaking. That looks uncomfortable. I'm dumping pieces of ceramic out now. Are you? Yeah, right over here. Oh, yeah. So that's a lot of ceramic coming out of it. OK. I mean, you guys can hopefully see that there's ceramic coming out of the top. It's a lot. OK. Oops. What's next? The 45-70 is next? Yeah, 45-70. It's the last big heavy round. And then we get into actual rifles. OK, what's that, Ben? This is my T-Rex gun. This is my Marlin 1895 SBL. This is a pre-Ruger one, so no fancy fluting or anything like that. But it's been a great gun for me. So we're shooting a 400-grain hard cast round out of this. I forget who loads this, but this is a bit of a thumper, so it should really smack the plate and shatter any stuff that's left in there. We've also backed off to roughly 25 just to get more realistic sort of rifle distances. Let's go ahead and see. This is going to hurt. I can't wait. I haven't shot this gun in a while. I'm going to hate my life after this. Yes, you are. Oh, that thing did a freaking backflip. Clear? Clear. Let's go check it out. He's nursing the injury already. All right, cut the high speed. That's going to be a bruise tomorrow. That did a freaking backflip. That did a flip, yeah. It was down here. It was all the way down here. Oh my god, look at this carrier. All right. I don't think that should be bulging like that. I'm not sure. Flip her over and let's take another look. Did anything come out of the top? It looks like something shredded through here. I can't tell if that was. I think that's an out, not an in. Because that's an in. Is that where you hit? I believe so, yeah. Oh, boy. Right next to where the 500 hit. Yep. That's why you have all that back of these people making. Okay. Ready? I'm as ready as. Okay, that felt good. Felt like fused together. It's so deformed it's not wanting to slide out of the carrier. Oh, I don't know if you guys could hear that. Look at that ceramic right there. That is a huge chunk of ceramic. That's bad. And we have, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's the money shot right there. That's the money shot. So it looks like they've got, like, a hard foamy thing around the edge, I guess, to catch any spall that's coming. Let's take a look. That's rough. Oh, boy. That really just. That would ruin your day. Is there anything inside the carrier that you can dump out? Oh, yeah. I just saw a jacket. Oh, my gosh, look at the cavity. Yeah, that's massive. Okay, let's give her a shake, shake, shake. Oh, that's toast. That's from the 500. Okay. That's the back of the 500. There's some pretty smashed lead here. I mean, hard cast. Yeah, I don't see any of the hard cast. I don't know where that is. It didn't go through, but it could have jumped up and down. It just completely opened it up. So, oh, there you go. So, it blew the top out of the carrier. So, we definitely have some spall coming out the top of the carrier. That's going into your chin. Yeah, that's dead as far as we're concerned. Yeah, that's a failure. And this wasn't even that severe. This was a bunch of pistol calibers. It's supposed to take multiple hits of black tip. There's so much more muzzle energy to that. I don't know. I mean, it could be because you hit it kind of near where the 500 hit. Kind of near, but still kind of near. All right. So, let's review. So, 9 mil. Yeah. This was? 44 mag. That was 500. 500, and it kind of blew out here. And that's 45-70. 45-70. And they're not stacked on top of each other. These are all spread out. So, that would be like two rounds of black tip. And they say multiple black tip. Yeah. I am very curious. So, we're obviously going to need to get out another plate. We have four of these, so if we need to go through them all, that's fine. But we're going to find out what this will really take. So far, 45-70 will defeat this. And we are going to keep using the same carrier because why waste another good carrier if it's just going to get these holes and shreds in it. All right. Let's go get a fresh plate and try that 45-70. How's your shoulder? Oh, not that bad, actually. It's just been a while, so there's a little bit of shock and all. I suffer from LBS, so you're going to have to forgive the little one. What is LBS for the internet? Little Bitch Syndrome. Oh. So, don't worry about it. It's fine. I'm working on it. I get meds now. All right. We swapped the plate out because the other one was useless. We are going to hit the fresh plate with one round of 45-70 400-grain hard cast. Here we go. Give it a fair chance. Yeah. We don't know if this will completely shatter the plate by itself, but we would like to see if that's true. Okay. No backflip this time. Let's go see what that plate has to say about it. All right. What do we have here? Okay. I'm not paying attention to holes in the carrier, so let's just pop this baby open and see what we got. I should be wearing gloves for this. Holy cow. Oh, boy. So, that's a fair shot. Yeah. It's not dead center, but that's a totally fair shot, and we have a lot of fraying on the side. The same issue. And it's coming right through the carrier, too. So, that would be into, like, armpit, shoulder area. And it's all in here, too. Look. You got lead. That is the hard cast lead from the 45-70. Oh, no, wait. That's rubber. That's, like, coating. Some of that is a spall coating. Some of that is lead. Okay. And then ceramic all in back here. And I rattled this out before I did this test. That's one round of 45-70 on a level 4 rated plate. I mean, I don't know if it's meant to be able to take that, but my brain says that in theory. There's no reason why it shouldn't. In theory. I mean, I don't know what kind of muzzle energy we're dealing with there. It's significant, but it's not crazy. I'm not shooting, like, 300 Win Mag at it or something, or, like, some crazy Nitro Express round. It's just 45-70. I think what we need to do, now that we know 45-70 absolutely defeats this armor, no question, I think we need to just start with a fresh plate again and go to 5.56 and see what happens. I think we're going to see a much different result with the bottleneck, the fast small cartridges versus these big bores. Because these are like freight trains. And that's like a laser. All right. So, new plate, and we'll try again. We're going to do one of XM193 and then one round of M855A1. And for the sake of shorter video, we're going to do these two back-to-back because that is a fresh plate, and we should have no problems with these two both being stopped by that plate. Fresh plate. OK. And I will try and put them in different spots so that, you know, YouTube doesn't get angry and say that we unfairly shot the plate because bad guys only spread out. I mean, we'll know if one of them goes into the dirt. We'll see it. Nope, that held it. OK. Let's go investigate. Ben told me to start rolling. OK, what's going on? There's, like, smoke coming up the top of the... Is that just ceramic dust? I don't know if it's ceramic dust. Probably is. It could have been a couple of sparks from that M855A1. It's really hard to see on camera, but there's, like, faint... It's smoking. Oh, you can see it a tiny bit. That can't be dust. That's smoking. It probably had a couple of sparks. Wow. Yeah. OK. And it's pouring ceramic out the bottom again. I shook this out. Oh, boy. I did shake this out. Oh, boy. I mean, we'll know. Yeah. OK. Damn. So, I believe this was your first hit. Yeah. And that would have been... Which one was first? This is XM193. That's where I shot first. OK. And then I aimed lower, and I did the M855A1. M855A1. OK. All right. Let's see what's going on here. There's not a lot of deformation. So, a little bit of separation in the material. Yeah, you have some ceramic there. Come around so you guys can see a little bit better. So, light deformation. OK. And, obviously, destroyed the ceramic. Yeah. I mean, my opinion as of now is there's no way in hell this is going to take multiple .30-06 rounds. AP? No! No. I just can't see it happening. But we're going to find out when we shoot .30-06. I think it'll hold a couple of them. OK. And what happened? Do we have deformation? We have some, but it's not a lot. So, it actually did OK with the A1? Yeah. It did fine with the A1. It stopped the round. It did its job. It was a little messy, but I'm not really going to knock it because it wasn't blowing everything out of the front of the carrier. It did blow some up out of the carrier, but that was out of a previous hole. So, the carrier seems to have caught most of it. I think you're getting a little spall, but I don't think that's lethal to you. So, it's doing OK. I want to hit this with the .30-06. You want to hit that plate? Before we swap plates, yeah, I want to hit this one. OK. See if we can... Let's try to get a hit down in there. We have... And again, to be fair, I'm going to rattle out all this ceramic so that we can see all the fresh stuff that comes out of it. OK. Alrighty, we have a Garand and I have a thumb. So, .30-06, full metal jacket. No, I don't have clips for this thing. I left them at home. If you wish Ben would smash his finger in there again, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Guys, like and comment. OK. .30-06. OK. Did we get a good center hit? Judging by the deformation on the back of the carrier that I feel right now before I even open it up, yes, I hit exactly where I meant to and it did exactly what I expected it to do. OK. And that area is now worn. Hear how that happens. There's a little bit of... A little bit of schmooze. Stuffs. Oh, we got a little... Splitty, splitty. And I don't think I hit it that low. We'll find out where you hit it. OK. Time for the big... Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Ouch. Oh. See? OK. So, first of all, let's give a like on the video for Ben's excellent shot placement. Excellent shot placement. That's pretty well spread out. That's exactly... Especially since that was the third round I've ever fired through that gun. And we have a decent amount of deformation. Oh, my God. It's like an apple. There's a significant bulge there. Significant. Ladies, calm down. OK. It stopped the round, though. I mean, we don't have clay to judge it based off of. It, like, folded the edge. But it's like... OK. So, we have... Oh, man. You can see separation here. Yeah. All right. What we have is another fresh plate. Same stuff. Yeah. And we are going to shoot it with multiple .30-06s. Actually, can we? Yeah. We have enough. It does not have a clip. I don't care. I'll single load every single one of them. OK. We don't have to film everything. We just shoot it and see what else. OK. Here we go. New plate. So, this is how you single load over and over again because you're an idiot and didn't bring a clip with you. Sorry, magazine. No, they're... Magazine. No clip. No magazine. No clip. I don't know. We're just going to keep shooting this until it breaks. Oh, good. You don't have to... Yeah. ...go fix it. This lighting is not my friend today. What do you mean? Off to the side. I hit it, but not good. OK. Let's do one more and see where we're at. That's probably going to move. I bet you we're going to get some ceramics. This is an off-angle shot. That thing's, like, laying down. I think you put it in the bottom. All right. I'll do another one. Let's do oblique shots. Ow. My thumb. OK. Let's go look. I can see fibers out the top right here. I don't know what they're from. Maybe that's from the carrier? Yeah. That's the carrier coming apart. A lot of deformation. You think there's a little... There might be some stuff in there. I don't know. Pull it out. We'll see. Sorry. I'm trying. I get stage fright sometimes. Gosh. Oh. Oh, that's not good. I don't know that I can get this out in one piece. Oh. OK. So these were 145 grain military classic. You can see that's one of the rounds there. I'll pick it up. This is Wolf military classic ammo that we were just using. Not AP. Yeah. This isn't super... This is not black tip. Not high pressure. You're really having that much trouble getting that out of there. Yeah. Because it's so wide now and I really don't want to cut my fingers. Oh, you're definitely going to cut your hands all apart. Shoved something way up in there. I think it caught one of those. Oh. There you go. Something went through. I think it was probably that one in the back. That low angle one because that was all shattered underneath and it just sailed right through. All right. Keep trying to pull that out of there. At this point, can we just cut the carrier? Yeah. If you've got a knife, that'll cut through that. For the people that will ask, what is that? This is a Zero Tolerance. This is a 0609er. Show me for the people. Okay. There you go. That's what Ben is cutting this apart with. This is a 20CV. For the knife nerds out there. Dude, that's doing a pretty good job cutting through there. Yeah. This is a fantastic knife. Oh, my gosh. Look at that plate. Oh, ouch. I think because I was aiming in the same place, I landed most of the rounds in the same place. I mean, they said it would take multiple. That's four rounds of ball ammo. That's not AP. Okay. Let's look at the back first because I want to see what happened there. It looks like one round made it through because I wasn't stacking rounds that good. It's likely that really low one. Yeah. No, because it's up here. The one that went through was up here. It hit here. It didn't come in through the bottom. What the hell? It hit here, but there was no ceramic left because I shattered that area, and it just sailed right through. There's an untouched or almost untouched tile. More tiles that are slightly damaged, but you can only see how it's put together now. And I don't see any. I shattered these. There's a little piece of jacket here. Again, for reference, this was a virgin plate, just .30-06 ammo. Yeah. Virgin plate, four rounds, ball .30-06. And I don't know what the armor standard is for these level fours, but that's not multiple rounds of black tip. No. I mean, I can see if you spread out multiple rounds. I could probably still hit the top of the plate. The top of the plate's fine. You see how small those tiles are. So as long as the fibers are still lined up in the back and the tiles are still intact, I bet you I could hit the top of the plate and it wouldn't go through. But I'm aiming basically in the same area, which, you know, I guess you shouldn't be standing in one place. But if you think you're behind cover and you get hit, I'm going to try and aim at the same spot. This is also iron sights. This wasn't modern optic. Yeah. Well, I don't know if we have a conclusion. We're going to double check with the company about the .45-70. We talked about that off camera. We want to make sure that, you know, we're not crapping on anybody for something that is not supposed to be rated for. However, very interesting results today. Very interesting. The anti-spalling that they said was, like, they said little to no spalling. I mean, 9mm spalled out of the thing. So I think that's... Yeah, you had graphic coming out with 9mm, and then you had ceramic flying out with the bigger stuff. Ceramic coming out the side of the carrier, that's significant. All right, let's go put all these together and gather our thoughts. Okay, so this is going to be our final thoughts on this. We have the four plates lined up in front of us. We started with the HK SP-5 9mm full mag jacket, 115 grain. That is the .44 mag, 180 grain jacketed hollow point. We have the Smith & Wesson .500, 300 grain XTP right here. Then the .45-70, 400 grain hard cast, which destroyed this plate. We then put up a new plate. We hit it again with a single round of .45-70, 400 grain hard cast, which blew out the side. That plate's toast. Obviously, we could hit a little bit more. Here we have the beginning of our next rifle rounds. So this is XM193, 5.56, full metal jacket. We have M855A1. That is the steel penetrator, enhanced penetration round. It's not an armor-piercing round, it's just a penetrator. And then we went to .30-06. This is standard ball ammunition, and that blew out the bottom of this one. So we said that plate is toast. And just for fun, we put up our last plate. This one kind of has a kickstand. We then hit it with four consecutive rounds of .30-06 ball ammo. Our full metal jacket. The first couple, it did stop. But then we did get an actual penetration here at an oblique angle. There was just no ceramic left to stop that last round. Yeah, the plate had already failed at that point. And we think that that may have been one coming in at an off angle, which kind of, instead of going through the front, came in through the back. We're not exactly sure, but that's a non-standard hit, so we're not going to hold that against it. What do you think, Ben? Is this something you would trust your life with at this point, knowing what you know now? Yeah, I think I'm going to use this one. I'm just going to put it back in the carrier right here, and a little bit of duct tape, and I'm good to go. I'll go home like this, that's fine. Now, I have my own preferences of level 4 plates. This stuff, kind of concerning. Although, can we say that if the ATF knocks at your door, .45-70 is probably a better choice than .30-06? I don't think we can say that. Then I'm not going to say that. I'll never say that. I don't think we can say that. I think the reality is that they said no spalling, little to no spalling. The 9mm spalled, came out of the front. It did not leave the carrier, but still spalling. Yeah, we got significant spall from .500, .45-70, .45-70, a little bit with the .55-6. It's all smoke with the .55-6. Yeah, the .30-06 definitely blew some out, but not as bad with the single rounds. It wasn't until consecutive rounds where you have ceramic flying everywhere. I mean, we are going to get on the phone with RTS and verify a few things before we publish this video, but right now this doesn't look great. It doesn't look great. No, I mean, I was expecting a little bit more durability out of these than, like, three rounds of ball .30-06 or a single round of .45-70 making it fail. You would not want to be on the other side of that with a single hit. That's a lot of deformation, and that's a lot of ceramic coming out the side. That's spall from a non-necked, it's technically a tapered case, round. Wow. Alright, well, if you guys enjoyed this video... Give me likes for my Garand thumb, please. And get subscribed if you want to see more stuff like this. Let us know down in the comments. We'll see you guys next time. See you next time.