I've seen MAC's .380 XP vs Ball gel test out of the G42 using the LeHigh and Underwood loads, and the 9mm XD test, but is there a 380 gel test of the 380 Xtreme Defender out there yet?  Preferably in the Underwood variety and using a Glock?

I had an interesting vs. discussion with the Underwood folks on the phone who were pretty impressed with the permanent wound cavity of the 65gr XD vs the 90gr XP, and they list the XD as having 15" penetration, but I would like to see some tests if possible.  

I can and will test the groups and feeding in our G42, but am not going to be able to do my own gel tests, so hoping someone else has/will.

I'm going to be very blunt:

Extreme Penetrator and Extreme Defender are bullshit gimmick ammunition. The people advocating it are paid shills who either do not understand projectile wounding or are willing to lie for a pay check. They have misinterpreted gel results by claiming or implying that the disruption in the gel caused by the temporary stretch cavity correlates to tissue damage. It does not. Period. The TSC is larger than seen in lead core ammo in the same caliber because the velocity is higher, but it is not remotely fast enough to contribute to wounding.

This was the same impression I've had going into my reading on the loads. I definitely haven't consumed any Kool-Aid at this point.  

I'm not a ballistics expert, but am pretty well versed in trauma and GSWs as mechanisms of injury.  I'm basically looking to see if these rounds are anymore viable than ball ammo in a 380.  Wound channels/cavities aside, it does not appear that there are many, if any, JHP on the market that will consistently penetrate deep enough to transfer energy where it is most needed.  Thus the question.

I'm a big HST/XTP fan and user, but am unimpressed with it in 380, so looking to see if these or something else can provide an advantage short of reverting back to a 9mm for this particular application.

The one thing this ammunition does better than FMJ, or JHP for that matter, is penetrate beyond 12", but less than 18". My personal, and entirely inexpert opinion is that the risk of over penetration is grossly exaggerated in gun forums and literature. Every time it comes up, I ask for a single example where a round fired by a private citizen or a police officer in a justified shooting has passed through the intended target and struck an uninvolved third party. I have yet to hear of a single such instance. If anyone ever does produce one, I will be shocked if the circumstances are such that a quality JHP with about 14" of penetration wouldn't have done the same.

I don't proclaim to be a gel ballistics expert, but MAC and Shootingthebull410 were both highly impressed with the Xtreme Penetrator rounds, and they have been pretty knowledgable and reputable on these things from my experience in their opinions on things that I *am* more familiar with. Where is the disconnect in their opinions and yours? Serious question, not rhetoric, I'm genuinely interested in more information on the subject. I'm debating on switching from XTPs, at least in .380.

I do not claim to be an expert, either, but real experts, including Dr. Roberts, Dr. Fackler, and the authors of the FBI report "Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness" have stated that TSC is not a significant factor at velocities much lower than about 2,000 fps.

MAC and ShootingTheBull410 receive ammunition from Lehigh and have an incentive to portray the ammunition in a positive light. Moreover, Lehigh has explicitly stated to at least one member here that they would only provide test samples if he would promise not to say anything negative. This is actually a really common practice and I'm surprised it isn't obvious to folks how much of YouTube and gun rags consist of paid advertising.

Again not being rhetorical, but would a reason these guys say TSC isn't much of a factor be that, prior to these new bullet designs, TSC and hydraulic cutting has never been exploited as a wounding mechanism?

I'm saying, prior to these designs, handgun rounds were either FMJ or HP, with minimal fluid pressures. Thus, it would have been a very minimal factor like they state. Would their opinion change after seeing the radically different wounding design that these and the equally ARX polymer bullets employ that actually rely on this as a primary damage mechanism, and make it much more pronounced? Or am I wrong in this hypothesis? I'll admit it, I really want to buy this hype! I want to see cutaways of actual meat hit with these, it would make me feel a lot better about if it actually works as advertised.

For that hypothesis to be correct, we would expect to see a different appearance to the TSC. Gel is not directly representative of tissue but if these new gimmick rounds did actually produce rifle like wounds as they claim (no shit, that's the bullshit ARX is claiming), the hell should look more like a rifle wound. Instead, it looks just like the wound track from FMJ at a similar velocity.

Alternatively, apply Occam's Razor. Which is more likely? That ammunition makers discovered some heretofore unknown alchemy or that people who are paid to say nice things say nice things?

I say someone buy some and a big chunk of meat, video tape the loading and firing of the round into the meat so there can be no argument about editing and see wtf it actually does in room temp or warm  MEAT and not gel. Until then, I know I'll stick to proven HP ammo. But I too want to believe the hype, esp. in .380auto. If someone wants to start a gofundme, i'll buy a box and the largest cut of meat I can find with the funds and shoot it with my Ruger LCP and take (be it crappy video) and high res pictures.

I've got some XD on the way, I should have also ordered XP but got interrupted during the order.  There's a meat locker nearby and sometimes a group of guys here do a pig pit roast - perhaps I'll drill it with an XD and and XP and examine the channels, but probably wouldn't be until the spring.

Soon after death, flesh undergoes many changes - most specifically in elasticity - that renders it an inaccurate test medium.

Fackler used live pigs in his early studies, and the results were comparable (on average) to humans. To test humanely, the pigs were put under general anesthesia with Fluothane. He later found that the pigs could be killed first (headshot), and if the tests were performed with 15 minutes or so the results were still valid.

Even FMJ 9mm can look impressive under those conditions.

Excuse my terrible graphic design skills.

The concept of these wonder rounds working as advertised goes against much of fluid mechanics, including Bernoulli's principle.

Illustration B is much more likely than the A or C that they suggest. The fluid will seek to equalize pressure, not flow directly into the channels.

I had never thought of this, but this seems plausible. I'm reminded of the mythbusters episode where they tested the efficiency of lowering your tailgate in traveling through a medium (the scallop design seems to mimic the pressure differential). They found that it was actually less disruptive than lowering the tailgate, which would be bad for the ballistics side of this analogy as it would equate to less tissue damage. Obviously there are a lot of other factors at play here, but that resonated with that brief somewhat scientific experience.

However, does this mostly apply to fluids that have a chance to get out of the way, so to speak? Or would body tissue experience the same movements in regards to pressure equalization that gas/liquids do? Also, I know muscle is pretty elastic while alive as mentioned above, so perhaps these rounds wouldn't really do much after all compared to the relatively non-elastic gel that is only supposed to approximate density, not elasticity.

So the argument is that these rounds look good by taking advantage of ballistics gel test factors that are not equivalent to real tissue, yes?

Yep, most living tissues will set up the same hydrodynamic pattern seen in B.

Very well-worded, and exactly. It looks good on paper, and takes advantage of the low elasticity of ballistic gelatin.

You can easily tear a block of ballistic gelatin in half with your bare hands, or squish a sample in half with force that would just bruise your living flesh.

This is not to say that the temporary cavity results from ballistic gelatin are useless - they are valid above 2000 FPS or so - but should be viewed relatively, not absolutely.

Exactly. Many people look to gelatin as a direct analog to human tissue while others think it's just jello with no real correlation. The appearance of the temporary stretch cavity at velocities below 2,000 fps, give or take, should be completely ignored. The size of a handgun wound is determined, for comparison purposes, by the diameter of the recovered projectile and the depth of the penetration. For rifle cartridges, the tearing caused by the TSC in gel is useful to tell us how early disruption happens and to compare in a relative way to other tests, but it is still not a direct picture of what the wound would look like.

Many of the folks doing ballistic testing on YouTube have no credentials* and have not read relevant materials such as the FBI's Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness or the various writings of Dr. Fackler and Dr. Roberts. Worse, some of them think themselves educated on the subject because they have read one or more of the various apocryphal books like the Marshall and Sannow book Stopping Power. They are simply unaware of how gelatin results should be analyzed. Others are aware but carefully word their analysis to imply impressive results without actually lying. As I mentioned above, it is important to remember that many of these guys earn substantial money from YouTube and are compensated both monetarily and with test samples by the companies they are "testing". This is why it is important for the viewer to understand how to interpret test results for themselves. It's also why I tend to avoid any commentary in my videos, except where necessary. I'll be publishing an article soon that highlights some of the seriously dirty stuff that goes on between some YouTube channels and vendors.













*Please note that I am no expert, either and I am simply parroting what I have learned from credible sources.

Did you watch the gel as MAC shot it/the tests ??

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-PDQcE-1T40


VIdeo shows .380 PMC ball, Underwood & Lehigh X.Pen. shot through barriers/no barrier into bare gel
giving long and good size Permanent stretch cavity.

Twice the penetration of the 8" of .380 PDX.  

And yes MAC references Dr Fackler:

http://www.thebangswitch.com/understanding-ballistics-gel/

The highlighted portion is contradictory. The stretch cavity and the permanent cavity are entirely different.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that ridiculously priced Lehigh stuff cuts slightly better because of the flat nose profile, but it's not doing any better than a lead core bullet with a flat nose and it's not making any profound difference in wounding. It does appear to yaw earlier in the high speed video though, which, along with the higher velocity would explain the larger TSC. MAC admitted in another video that the gelatin he used was not at the proper temperature and this video did not include calibration figures. You can't draw many conclusions from this sort of testing.

It is true that he references Fackler but he gets almost everything wrong. The second sentence in that article is:



Clear Ballistics gel is not 10% animal collagen. It does produce some similar results, at certain velocities, but it is not the same thing as he implies. He goes on to say:



This is also not correct. Properly calibrated 10% ordnance gelatin produces results that correlate strongly with human soft tissue.




He goes on to further pimp the Clearballistics product and justify his failure to produce accurate results. The bottom line is that he appears to have gleaned most of his information by misinterpreting comments on his videos, rather than reading original source material on the subject. Again, I do not claim to be an expert myself, but I have read some of the relevant material from the real experts. For what it's worth, Dr. Roberts has commented on the Cearballistics product only so far as to say that it is not the standard. In his view, its accuracy or lack thereof is irrelevant because it is not the standard identified by the IWBA and the FBI. Brassfetcher also did a very detailed comparison of the penetration figures seen from properly prepared 10% gelatin and clear gel and determined that, as velocity increases, penetration results deviate. The penetration is only relevant at normal pistol velocities, but a significant deviation can be seen as low as 1,200 fps. I have noted an even greater deviation at rifle velocities in comparing my own test results to those obtained using clear gel.



TL/DR:

TSC still has nothing to do with tissue damage at pistol velocities.
MAC doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
MAC's results are inaccurate and irrelevant.



Finally, have you ever wondered why he does so many "tests" of the same product?

Are you a forensic dr. What is your background if you don't mind me asking.

I have an internet connection and the sense to listen to experts.

Good posts.  We see bullets that are supposed to move us past the Newtonian physics other ammunition manufacturers have been limited by all the time.  I continue to be extremely dubious of these products until they are demonstrated by clearly independent sources to perform better than established designs.  

As for the claim of a wound cavity that will contribute to debilitation at .380 speeds.. that would be self evident bullshit.  Bernoulli's Principle?  Really?  That states that a layer of liquid moving faster that the surrounding liquid will generate lower pressure.  This accounts for a preservation of energy.  As you increase kinetic energy in one way, you decrease energy (static pressure in this case) in another.  Exactly what you don't want if you're trying create an outward disruption wave to destroy blood vessels and a permanent cavity for them to bleed out into.  Unless of course they are saying their rounds cause the perp to implode.  Cool.  Just think of the marketing potential..

Dude, don't go bringing science into this.


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Don't forget the shills for Clear Ballistics gel that do the same thing.


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Again with the science.  The aneursyms of Youtubers will be rupturing.


Seriously though, strong work.  


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