Can steel body armor stop armor piercing 7.62x51mm?

That test looks phoney, I think that was a standard ball round. Why did I NOT see a black tip on that round, something ALL 7.62X51 AP ammo has???

Interesting! I'm curious to know what type of armor that round is designed to penetrate?

From what I've heard, M2AP is a far more effective penetrator than M61, though. I doubt that plate would have stopped M2AP at the same velocity.

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I'm not familiar with M61, made my prediction based on personal experience with M2, which I was able to get through 1" mild steel plate at 50 yards when fired from a 22" Remington 700 .30-06.

From what I understand AP was designed to go through cars, trucks, stick frame walls and light body armor/flack vest without coming drastically apart.

It does that very well from the test I have done on cars over the years.

Class III+ plate is designed to stop ammo within a certain velocity usually 2900 FPS or less so bullet design for the most part does not play as big a factor as speed. Most 308/762x51 runs around 2700 to 2800 FPS at the muzzle.

I have seen test like this before where 45 gr 5.56 varmint loads will go right through it but velocity out of a 20 in bbl and some 16 in bbl’s is 3200 FPS or more.

chopinblock
That's mostly true. Velocity is the biggest factor in perforating steel body armor. Still, certain bullet designs can make a big difference. This same plate stopped five 50 gr TSX bullets at over 3,500 fps and one M193 at 3,369 fps, but was perforated by one 62 gr M855A1 at 3,251 fps.

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I agree and there are other factors that come into play as well like distance from target angle and how solid the target is mounted.

When doing personal testing on various cars we found that certain bullets would penetrate certain portions of a car better if you where at 25 yards vs. 15 yards vs. 10 yards we think the velocities at 10 where to high so the bullet would destroy itself but move to 15 or 25 you then had both energy and the right speed for penetration while still retaining some mass.

It was some years ago and I will say it was not a scientific test just a group of us seeing how things worked on my range with different calibers on different portions of a car.

Test cars 76 Vega, 86 Subaru wagon, 75 Dodge van, 89 Chevy van.

I have shot a lot of LC armor-piercing ammo and I have never seen one that did not have a black tip. The M-993 round also has a black tip.

I don't care if it will penetrate or not. I'm trying to figure out how to get a gig where companies send me stuff and say "Shoot this with stuff and put it on youtube."



Matt

If you would have shot this with an FN FAL it probably would have made it through, due to the greater barrel length.

Spartan just sold a lot of level IIIA plates.

See for yourself

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box...-truth-tests-infidel-body-armor-rifle-plates/

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-16-level-iiia-armor/

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-24-sniper-against-armor/

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-15-fragmentation-armor/

BTW: Terrifically entertaining site.

7.62x51 AP WILL penetrate steel and sapi plate armor. The black tip is for designation purposes. Some folk paint the tips of munitions without tungsten, steel or, other piercing cores for the cool factor and then sell or trade them off. .308 AP ammo is more than capable to penetrate various chest plates even from 16" semi/gas operated rifles.

Well put, I stand corrected.

The penetrate rating of armor will determine if 7.62 AP will pass through. Even an API might not penetrate an armor rated high enough. However the majority of chest plates (SAPI), issued to military personnel until replaced by more protective ESAPI then XSAPI, would not stop such a round. ESAPI was known to stop hotter 30 cal ammo before 2006.

abq87120 said:

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box...-truth-tests-infidel-body-armor-rifle-plates/

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-16-level-iiia-armor/

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-24-sniper-against-armor/

http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-15-fragmentation-armor/

BTW: Terrifically entertaining site.

Click to expand...

Sorry but all I get is

503 Service Unavailable

all those links do not work

chopinblock, obviously, it's not the black paint that makes it AP. :banghead: It is there to identify, at a quick glance, what is AP and what isn't. I have never seen any 7.62 round, from any NATO country, that was not so identified.

But, if you have some, then I just learned something! Not all AP ammo is black tipped.

I do know this: I have several pieces of armor plate, defective door panels that were never installed on a Hummer. It is 1/4 " thick and extremely heavy. M2 30 cal AP will zip right through it past 200 yards, whereas 7.62X51 AP will not. The M2 AP round is definitely better.

How about you shoot some trees at 200 yards with 7.62 and 5.56 ball ammo, to see which round penetrates better?

Spoiler alert.

I already have. There is no comparison. If it were a drag race the 7.62 won by fifteen car lengths. Nailed an 18" diameter pine. M-80 went right through, the green tipped poodle shooter bullets.....not so good. They are still somewhere in the tree.