Battle Steel Level III+ Lightweight & Affordable Armor Plate Test & Review

Welcome back everybody. As you probably guessed from the title of the video, today we are going over some armor plates and we are going to eventually destroy them. We'll see what it takes to do so, but this I believe is the last Battlesteel plate that I have tested. So I believe I've tested all of their other models besides this one. This is actually one that I'm personally interested in. So what this is, is it's a level three plus special threat plate, which that is not an NIJ official rating, but what it is rated for, and there's other companies that are making a similar type of product, is basically, if you look at the different levels out there, your level four is your .30-06 armor penetrating round and your level three is your rifle rated rounds, but not M855 and not M80 ball, which are relatively common rounds in America. So what they tried to do here was not have the weight of a level four plate, but still have the ability to stop what are relatively common rounds, M855, which is a 62 grain green tip, and then M80 ball, which is of course a 7.62x51 standard NATO issued ammo. So this plate is supposed to be able to do it, but without having the weight a level four plate would have. So this particular one here is in 11x14, however these are also made in 10x12, which is probably what most folks will get, and then additionally 6x6 side plates, they also make it in a shield. So this here is a 12x24 shield, and basically you have your little hand portion here, and then you have this portion here where you would push, or rather run your arm through, and then that way you can maneuver with the shield on the move and have the ability to have mobile cover. Now we're not going to actually test the shield out today, we have a full test of their level three version that you guys can check out, but we're just going to assume, because I asked and they said it's true, it is the exact same material. So whatever this will stop, the shield will stop as well, and as you guys can see here, we have a shooter's cut on there, and in terms of the actual thickness, it's relatively thin, and including the actual substance that it is surrounded in, it is right at three quarters of an inch thick, so relatively thin. As you guys can see here, it is a multi-curve plate. I do believe they actually only say that this is a curved plate, but as you guys can clearly see, it is multi-curved, so that way those of you guys who are into that, you'll get that comfort that you get from wearing a multi-curve plate, and basically we are going to shoot it up today and see what it can stop, what it can't stop. I actually have a couple of them out here, and we brought some .30-06 AP. I'm debating it. We shall see. Regardless, let's head over, put it behind some dirt, or rather up against some dirt, so that way we have a backing against it, and see what it can and can't stop. All right, we've got the armor set up at about 10 feet downrange. As you guys can see, we have green tips there, 16-inch mid-length barrel, and we'll see what happens. Let's check it out. As you guys saw in the slow-mo, we had our entrance hole right there towards the top left, and we had absolutely no penetration at all. Sticker's starting to come off, but otherwise, just fine. Now we're going to hit it with some M80 ball, and I would imagine that deformation is going to be a little bit bigger from M80 at 10 feet. We'll find out. We have that M80 ball loaded up there, and we're going to fire it through my Savage. This has a 22-inch barrel, plenty of velocity at this distance. Let's check it out. As you all saw from the slow-mo, again, we had our entrance hole there. That M80 ball went in there, and as you see here on the back face deformation, it stopped it. So, there is no doubt about it. It hit it hard, as you guys can see there. Hopefully, the camera's picking that up. It definitely stretched it. It stretched the actual material that it is encased in, but you can see that it definitely did its job, and what is it? We should talk about that. So, basically, what this is here is we have a ceramic front, up front, and it's breaking up those bullets. Behind it, we have UHWMPE, which is very lightweight material, and what happens here very, very quickly as these bullets hit is that the ceramic up front breaks up the bullet material, and then in the rear, the UHWMPE catches it. UHWMPE works in a way that's actually really cool. So, what it actually does, it's a really cool material, is that it's a solid in the state that it's in right now in terms of temperature, and it's layered, and then when it's introduced to something that is very hot with a high friction, like a bullet coming into it, it momentarily turns semi-liquid and actually encases that material, and then it almost immediately, again, turns back into a solid state, which is how it stops the bullet. Really cool stuff. It's multi-hit rated, as you'll probably see here. You know, the ceramic, of course, up front is for the rifle stuff, but as you'll probably see, it stops lots and lots and lots of pistol rounds. We'll see, but what I want to do first is, since this is not rated for 30-06 armor piercing, we're going to shoot it with 30-06 armor piercing and see what happens. I'm genuinely curious if this plate, despite being lightweight versus a level four option, will stop it. I have no idea. Again, it is not rated for this, but we're going to find out. As you guys can see, hopefully clearly there, we have that black hit 30-06 armor piercing coming out of my Springfield sniper rifle here, and we'll see what it does. Place your bets down below in the comment section. We shall see. I tried to shoot it in a place with fresh ceramic to give it as best chance as possible. You can see we had that down here with our entrance hole, and it went through. For those of you guys who bet that it would go through, you and AP went through. Again, that's a super difficult round to stop. It is not rated for that, but I just wanted to see. Could it do it? Turns out the answer is no, but one thing you will notice there is that the deformation is very similar in terms of distance to what we had there with the M80 ball. So, what was happening for sure is that it was trying to do it. So, I'd be willing to bet that ceramic broke that bullet up a little bit, maybe not in a small enough fragment where that AP tip couldn't go through, and it was trying to grab it with that UHWMP, but it's just too much, and it killed it. But, we're going to keep shooting it, because this thing, I guarantee it can stop a lot more rounds, as we'll soon find out, hopefully. Next up, we have some 45-grain .223 Remington by Remington Ammunition. This stuff here is flying in terms of velocity. However, it's coming out of a 12.5-inch barrel Rosco upper here, and we'll see what it will do. This stuff out of a 16-inch barrel has penetrated level 4 here on the channel, and we will see. A little burst into it does. With the slow-mo, you guys probably know how many we had on there better than I do, but I know we at least had a couple, and we can see entrance holes that weren't there previously, so that's an indicator. Obviously, that's our .30-06 there. Had a couple come down here. One hit there. Stopped them all. No problem. That's just a tear there. As you guys can see, there's no penetration at all where that .30-06 was, probably from this round just continuing to push it back, but stopped it just fine. Let's keep going. Once again, we're going to hit with a round that it is absolutely not rated for. I'm sure the folks over at Battlesteel are pumped to see that, but we have a .45-70 Government Plus T Underwood ammo, .305 grain, extreme penetrator, so again, in absolutely no way is this plate rated for this round, but you know, it's kind of what we do around here, so put it in the old Winchester, cycle it in there, and let's find out. As you guys saw from the slow-mo, it definitely had some energy. It hammered that plate as well as my shoulder, and we had our entrance hole right there, obviously close to a 855 round. Went in there. Did it penetrate? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Right there. Obviously, we had some deformation because that thing hits with a thump, but it stopped it just fine. We're going to keep going. Up next, guys, we have some Red Army Standard. This is full metal jacket stuff, 7.62x39, and my RPK barrel here, the Yugo, so we're getting extra velocity out of it, and we will see how this one likes a little full-auto funk on it. You never know. At this point, it really comes down to whether or not it hits the compromised part of the plate, I think. We'll see. At this point, you guys have seen the slow-mo, so you probably know a little bit more than I do, but I'm pretty sure I hit two compromised areas with that burst, so the one up here, definitely compromised, and we have some of the ceramic here shoot out front, out top, rather, I should say. It looks like it could be a bullet fragment. I don't know. Again, actually looking at it right now, it looks like it is a bullet fragment that went out the top, but again, that was because the angle of the plate had went like that, so again, compromised in that regard, and then additionally, we definitely hit one here, and we definitely hit one of these two here as well, and you guys can see here, this is not a pass-through at all. If I move everything away, hopefully you guys can see that. No pass-through, but this spot right here was a pass-through, so one of those went through, and I'm guessing it's the one that hit right there on the actual 45-70 hole, so it did go through with that 7.62x39, but it stopped all of the rest that hit there. At this point, the plate is obviously compromised for rifle-rated stuff, but we have some 9mm, 115 grain, full metal jacket, minimum ammunition here coming out of my Zenith ZF5, and we'll see how it does with the pistol stuff. Check it out. As you guys saw there, we had a couple hits that were almost on top of each other, and then after that, just spread around here and here, and we had absolutely no more pass-through at all. Stopped everything just fine with that 9mm. Well, it stopped 9mm, will it stop 45? We have some 230-grain Remington ball stuff coming out of my UMP here, and we will see. Check it out. Obviously, more holes in the front, but absolutely none in the back. The UHWMP is catching it, and I would be able to bet you could go 100-plus rounds of pistol ammunition in this guy before we'd ever see any issues, and probably then we wouldn't even see it because it is a very cool material, but it stopped them all just fine. In the interest of respecting your time, we're going to call it quits there. In terms of shooting the plate, we have kind of learned what it can and cannot stop. M855, M80 ball at 10 feet stops them just fine. However, you know, a whole bunch of machine gun rounds fired into it at 10 feet, eventually that ceramic will become compromised as we saw there, but pistol rounds, still, it's going to eat them up all day long. We mentioned in the beginning, these come in a couple different sizes. Obviously, 11x14, 10x12 shield, side plates as well, and the big one that's probably the most important factor about these, at least in my opinion, is twofold. Number one is going to be price point, number two is going to be weight. So, on the 10x12, which is probably the most popular one of these plates out there, they come in at 4.5 pounds. Now, if you look at a standard level 4 plate, that is coming in individually at 8 pounds. That is like the standard. There are others out there, the battle scale version, I think it's 6.5 pounds. Regardless, even compared to the battle scale level 4, you're dropping a significant amount of weight. If you're wearing two plates, that is four pounds versus the level 4, and anybody who's worn body armor professionally in the heat like we are out here today, plus it's well into the triple digits rather today, it's humid. When you're wearing these plates all day long, maneuvering, doing what you need to do, any weight drop that you can get is significant, and trust me, you want it, and this one definitely delivers. Again, it's going to stop the vast majority of stuff out there that you guys are going to run into in the civilian American market. Now, a few other things to talk about here. This version that we tested out today is not NIJ certified. However, they do make an NIJ very compliant model. It's just going to be a little bit more expensive. So, as of right now, when I'm filming this, of course, there'll be a link in the video description. The 10 by 12 variant of this one that is not NIJ certified is going to come in around $150, give or take, depending on when you're watching this, and then, of course, the shield price will be here on your screen, but the price may change in the future, and it definitely will change if you want the NIJ certified version. For folks who don't know, to send a plate through NIJ certification costs approximately $25,000 to $30,000, so they have to pass that cost along to the customer, the testing cost, which is a third-party cost that Battlesteel incurs. So, if you want that, it's going to be a little bit more expensive for that version. It's the exact same plate. One's just certified. One isn't. Now, I know a lot of you guys want that NIJ certification for your department or whatever the case may be, so both options are there for you guys if you want to pick them up, but obviously, for the price and the weight, there's not a lot that's going to compete with these out there at all. There's just really nothing, at least that I'm aware of, for the price and weight of these and what they will actually stop. I mean, I definitely recommend them if you're somebody out there who wants to save weight but still is a little bit worried about that 855 being so common. I would definitely take a look at them. If you guys have any questions about the arm or anything like that, you can post down below in the comment section. As always, you can post over at my social media sites that you see here on my screen. If you aren't subscribed to the channel and you like this type of test, definitely subscribe. This is what we do a lot. It's one of the bread and butter things we do here on the channel is destroy armor. All armor dies here one way or another, and this plate was no exception, but it put up a very, very impressive plate. If you are subscribed to the channel, thank you for that, and if you guys are subscribed, you're not seeing two to four videos a week here on the channel, definitely sign up for my email list that you see at the website here on your screen. This email goes out at most once a month. It has all of the videos since the previous email went out, so that way there's no big tech censoring your eyes from my content. Additionally, if these go on sale, anything like that, or there's any other good deals that I find around the internet, we'll send that out in the daily deals email. You can sign up for that at the link here on your screen. The email has a virtually zero unsubscribe rate, which tends to tell me folks are very happy with what we're putting out in it, and basically it is an email that goes out every day and has six or seven of the best deals that we find around the internet in it. It has, rather, if it's in there, it is the cheapest that I'm aware of anywhere on the internet on that particular day, so that way you guys can save yourself some time because you don't have to do the looking because I've done it for you, and hopefully save yourself some money as well. And with that, we'll end the video. Thanks as always. I truly appreciate it. I look forward to everybody, and seeing everybody rather, in the next video.