I believe P&S did an armor episode with maybe Dugan Ashley where they showed that fragmentation from steel armor is able to make it through the coating, and past the carrier, and potentially could cause harm. Since I'm #backyardscience, I worked with what I have. I likely want to repeat this test with plates inside a medium quality plate carrier, as well as using UHWMPE plate, and ceramic.

TL:DR spall liner coatings on steel armor have their limits, and if you want to run steel, get a fragmentation cover/pocket thing sold to encapsulate the steel with to protect yo'self:D

Yeah the carrier slows it a bit but the carotid is super vulnerable. Especially if you have a beer belly.

If you're already spending that kind of money, buy some good ceramics and be done with it. How much is your life worth to you?

But muuuh multi hit and shelf life :)

This needs to be stickied.

Spall goes outward along the plate. Soft armor would have to be wrapped around the sides of the plate to catch the spall.

I have spall covers in addition to the coating. Honestly that being said; go with Ceramic.

More importantly, a plate shouldn't have to rely on assumptions about what carrier it's in to actually do what the plate claims to do. That would make it an ICW plate, which the manufacturer needs to mention in the product description.

As usual, great stuff. Pretty well shows that there's no magic solution to this problem. With as cheap as special threat plates are these days, the only argument for steel is losing relevance.

AR500 armor is already more expensive than ceramics.

They lure in people who don't understand how armor is supposed to work with low prices on their flat bare steel plates, and then charge you extra to "upgrade" it with curves and spray-on truck bed liner that doesn't actually stop spall.

Once you take AR500's Level III+ plate and pay extra to make it single curve (which they call multicurve on their website but is actually still just single curve) and to add the spray-on spall coating that doesn't actually stop spall, it's actually more expensive than Hesco L210's and other high quality ceramic options available. Not to mention much heavier.

And that's not even including the added cost and weight of adding a kevlar spall sleeve.

Those plates do make for good range targets, so there is that.

They are also good for training, but will flat out admit, that running in a single or flat steel plate sucks compared to a  multicurve goodness. I have a few sets of CATI multi-curves that I use for running and fitness needs

Should be stickied.  I've gone blue in the face trying to educate fat neckbeard condor-clad 3per types on the error know-nothing.  "Some men you just can't reach".

Gotta hand it to AR500 for running a hugely successful media blitz on the know-nothings.

Spartan Armor Systems steel plates

Spall coating as well as spall covers

I just got RMA ceramics and put them in a condor MOPC. What tier neck beard am I?

Almost forgot to mention the other ridiculous thing AR500 does where they insist on making one of the shoulder cuts lower than the other side. Pick left or right, but no option available for just having a symmetrical plate.

I figure it probably has to do with saving room on whatever size steel sheets they buy as blanks to cut the plate shapes out from.

I've bought two sets of ceramic this year (RMA and Hesco), and they were fairly inexpensive and significantly lighter than the one set of AR 500's I have. A few years ago, AR 500 made some sense as it was something and cheaper than the ceramic that was on the market. Now, not so much. I keep the steel plates for training purposes as they can take a beating.

They sure do I had a set of cheap viper steel plates with a thin layer of spall and both held up fine against 762x51 and 556. I have some pistol rated steel targets I forgot to bring out and another set of actual AR500 with thick spall as well.

The plates made for great targets and if I can find a good way of mounting down range I'll have at least 6 pieces of steel to set up for practice.

The spall was completely gone up front and besides some very very light back face from the m80 at 100 they held up great.

I always tell people to look at the line cut into the ground in front of a steel target. Depending on the size of their gut the line armor is going to cut IQ on their throat or their cock.

Seems to be some poor take-aways from the video.  I don't know why you wouldn't look at frag progression through each shot.  At the end of the video he states that it does a good job of containing frag from the first two rounds.  I just don't get the OMG frag coated steel wont contain spall from SIX 308 hits!!!  

I am not defending steel armor or claiming it is better than others. One thing steel armor manufactures seem to have that others don't is more variability in size and cuts with some really low budget options (although potentially heavy and not comfortable -flat plates).

I don't want to bleed out from spall, but I doubt I could move or breath after six 308 hits to the chest.  Everything is a tradeoff.

The NIJ specification for level III is 6 hits. One would reasonably expect "new and improved" frag coating to handle the min. The cost of steel anymore with build up coat, exceeds the cost of the an NIJ level IV certified plate.

This video is more or less to make people aware of the fact that the frag coating alone is not enough to sufficiently protect a wearer of steel plates.

I completely understand your point. Standards are standards, but they rarely reflect the real world. Showing the effects from shot to shot would be valuable and there are a lot of other videos out there which do this (although the setup in this video was nice with the gel).

Buffman, isn't organic Ballistic Gel calibrated with an airgun BB? How far do those penetrate calibrated gel, at what fps? But yea, since the arrival of LAPG plates (comparing budget to budget), steel is dead. Here's a good test for you to do: Stick a Ceramic/Poly plate in a Black, Steel box in May, and shoot it in Sept - I'm still leery of leaving anything "Poly" in a vehicle, all summer.

Six hits from the world most common assault rifle? Doesn’t seem unrealistic to me.

about 3.5" @ 580~ fps. I thought try to make a box for extreme heat. Right now I have 2 plates outside. 1 pair exposed open elements, 1 pair in the swamp :D

ive caught an entire 9mm jacket that separated after striking a steel plate to the lip. Fixed the problem w butterfly sutures. From industry engineers, your skin has about the tensile strength of one sheet of Kevlar. Your skin is REALLY elastic and if it was rigid like paper it would have nowhere near the tensile strength. I was surprised when the nerd engineer told me this.

So considering this, a buddy of mine and I did some testing on some Steelies we came into over beers and a set of AR500armor plates he bought with the extra spall coating.

The three sets of steels took dozens of .308 and 855 without penetration.

What was impressive was that the extra spall coating caught all the spall (we set up in a cardboard box which is definitely gonna show any spall that’ll break skin). Up till 6 rounds on one plate and 7 on the other before the coating delaminated. Notably there wasn’t even rear deformity at that point, and the steel plate showed all signs of being able to take literally hundreds more like any AR500 steel target. Also notable, steel plates make a pretty decent clang when you shoot em.

So what?
Firstly the spall coating actually works. And a ceramic will stop 3-5 rounds before it goes kaput. Period end of story.

Secondly there’s this fantasy that you’re gonna be taking rounds like the Mandalorian and driving on. Knowing several dudes who’ve been shot with a rifle (not Spetznaz guys taking pistol shots to plates) and had either a plate or their helmet stop it, it sucks balls. They’re down for a bit. Which is why we fight as a team/cell. The other 3 dudes are there to finish the fight while the guy who just took a KO shot to the chest gets his wind back before he gets shot in the head. I guarantee you that if you are solo and I pop you in the plates with a rifle shot, I’m either gonna take the second or two of you with a broken stance to hit something soft and then put one in your grape or I’m closing the distance and submitting you so we can cuff you. Either way you’re fucked. Then we’re Gonna make a decision about how to sally forth bc one of my guy’s plates is compromised, but chances are that dude’s not gonna be feeling too hot after taking a rifle shot for a pretty tactically significant amount of time.

Put the plates in a carrier - that is the only close to definitive way to see if steel is as bad as they say, in regards to frag. Can a carrier stop a BB going at 500fps? (yes, I know the BB is blunt and round - but it's as close as you're going to get).

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Coming from a guy who learned the expensive way