At the dawn of the 21st century, service pistols face a new challenge that threatens to render them all but obsolete: Body armor capable of stopping standard service pistol cartridges is becoming widely available. Currently there are two trends in military handgun ammunition to address this growing concern. One is the development of small-bore, high-velocity, armor-piercing rounds. These are capable of penetrating soft body armor but have questionable terminal performance.

The other is an attempt to extend the life of the 9x19mm through the development of modern armor-piercing loads. Both approaches are an attempt to keep the standard service pistol a viable weapon on the modern battlefield. Although perhaps adequate when it comes to soft body armor, no military handgun ammunition is capable of defeating current hard plates.

5.45x18mm
Developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s, the 5.45x18mm 7N7 cartridge was the first of the modern small-bore military handgun rounds. A tiny bottlenecked round, the 5.45x18mm was designed specifically for the compact Pistolet Samozaryadniy Malogabaritniy (Pistol Semi-automatic Miniature or simply PSM) pistol. Dimensionally it has a caliber of 5.45mm (.214 inch) and a case length of 17.8mm (.701 inch). The projectile is a gilding metal clad, steel-cored flat point. Projectile length is approximately 14mm with a weight of 41 grains.

Muzzle velocity is a sedate 1,033 fps, which generates a lackluster 98 ft.-lbs. of energy. Despite the low velocity, the 5.45x18mm’s projectile diameter and design allow it to penetrate 30 to 45 layers of Kevlar. Intended for high-ranking Soviet officers, the PSM was light and easy to carry yet still capable of penetrating the U.S. flak jackets of the period.

Strengths: A small round chambered in an easy to conceal handgun, good penetration of soft body armor, mild recoil, easy to suppress.

Weaknesses: Underpowered, poor terminal performance, largely unknown outside of Russia.

5.7x28mm
In the 1980s, lightweight personal body armor was becoming more prevalent among Soviet units. While these flak jackets were easily penetrated by rifle fire, they were able to defeat 9x19mm ball rounds. So there was growing concern over NATO’s 9x19mm weapons being rendered obsolete. Fabrique Nationale recognized this threat and began working on a solution in the 1980s, an effort that picked up steam when NATO established the CRISAT target--a 1.6mm titanium plate and 20 Kevlar folds--as a penetration standard. FN responded with a small-caliber, high-velocity cartridge called the 5.7x28mm.

A small bottlenecked cartridge with a 28mm-long case, it’s topped with a .224-inch-diameter projectile. The standard military SS190 ball loading features a 31-grain armor-piercing FMJ-BT projectile, and there are tracer, subsonic and practice rounds, too--as well as commercial 40-grain sporting ammunition (SS196 and SS197). (Editor’s note: FN and ATK, parent of Federal Cartridge, recently signed a distribution agreement under which ATK would become the exclusive distributor of commercial sporting ammo in the U.S.; the restricted law enforcement and military ammunition remains an FNH USA product.)

The cartridge’s overall length is 40.5mm, and it weighs half what a 9x19mm cartridge does. To cut through soft body armor, the .224-diameter SS190 projectile incorporates a cone-shaped steel penetrator sitting atop an aluminum core surrounded by a steel jacket.

Velocity of the 5.7x28mm SS190 ball load from a P90 PDW’s 10.2-inch barrel is 2,346 fps. Fired from an FN Five-seveN service pistol it still clocks a respectable 2,133 fps. Despite the high muzzle velocity, recoil is approximately 30 percent less than a 9x19mm. The 5.7x28mm is capable of defeating the CRISAT target at 200 meters.