FN Five-seveN

American Handgunner, Jan, 2000 by Charles E. Petty

Is this the shape of handguns to come?

A radically new pistol/cartridge combination graces the cover of this first issue of American Handgunner in the 21st century. The gun was developed as part of a military weapons system and is also available to law enforcement. For reasons that will become obvious, neither the gun nor the ammunition will ever be sold to civilians or even to individual officers.

Fabrique Nationale (FN) of Herstal, Belgium is a major supplier of military weapons and has contracts to manufacture M - 16 rifles and M249 and M240 belt-fed machineguns, in 5.56mm and 7.62mm respectively, for the U.S. government. These are made in their plant in Columbia. S.C.

About 10 years ago FN began a project to develop weapons and ammunition for the battlefield of the next century. There were a lot of issues to address, but foremost of these was the fact that troops would, routinely, be wearing some form of soft body armor. FN's intent was to develop a small arms weapons system for use by support troops whose duties might not permit them to carry more conventional weapons, but would still allow them to successfully engage the enemy with a small, convenient weapon that would defeat soft armor and Kevlar helmets.

The answer came in the form of a compact submachinegun, the P-90, and a pistol, the Five-seveN. Both of these weapons systems were developed to fire a new cartridge, the 5.7x28mm.

The 5.7mm is a departure from conventional ammunition thinking. It uses a 31 gr. FMJ bullet at velocities of about 2,300 fps from the 9.5" barrel of the P-90. It is specifically designed to penetrate soft body armor up to level IIIA without the potential for excessive penetration that may exist with the more common .223 rifles.

"The 5.7x28mm bridges the gap between conventional handgun cartridges fired in submachineguns and the .223," said Bill Forson of FN. The cartridge is really what makes the whole thing different and potentially very valuable to law enforcement.

Everyone saw a dramatic example of the use of body armor by badguys not too long ago in the infamous North Hollywood bank robbery sent live to living rooms around the country thanks to satellite TV. Experts think that such incidents will increase in the future.

The 5.7mm cartridge specifically defeats up to level IIIA body armor-- but not trauma plates-- without the excessive soft tissue penetration sometimes seen with the .223. It does this by virtue of the bullet design. It is meant to be unstable, and it is.

The instability seriously limits penetration in soft tissue and even though it is a full metal jacket bullet, penetration rarely exceeds 12", even after the bullet has penetrated barrier materials.

With conventional hollowpoint ammo, expansion is relied upon to reduce penetration, but if the hollowpoint is plugged by barrier materials, such as clothing, penetration may be more than is desirable-- sometimes a lot more. The 5.7mm's bullet is not so influenced.

The little 31 gr. projectile has a steel jacket and a two-piece core. The forward third of the core is steel and the balance is aluminum. The forward center of gravity, due to the heavier core element at the front, does not seem to harm accuracy.

We were able to do side-by side comparisons of the P-90 and Five-seveN by shooting both into 10 percent ballistic gelatin, first bare and then covered with the FBI standard for heavy clothing-- a t-shirt, flannel shirt, and down-filled denim jacket. We then "protected" the gelatin block with a test panel of level IIA soft body armor. The results were very interesting.

The first round fired into bare gelatin from the P-90 penetrated the entire 12" block, bounced off a piece of plywood behind the gelatin and was recovered on the ground a few feet in front of the target.

Examination of the gelatin blocks and recovered bullets was informative. The bullets, other than rifling marks, looked completely unharmed, but you could see clearly in the gelatin how they tumbled and left a permanent cavity that was every bit as large as that created by many conventional hollowpoint handgun bullets.

The entire philosophy of the 5.7x28mm cartridge is controversial. The very idea of a .22 Anything for police is anathema for some. Critics argue its puny bullet weight can't be relied upon to stop a determined assailant. Even adherents point out that the little high velocity cartridge doesn't always penetrate enough. However, the truth is that there is no single "right answer" to the penetration question.

There surely are applications, such as a jam packed crack house, where the Five-seveN's lack of penetration would be an advantage. Instead of having to worry about a round over-penetrating and injuring an officer or bystander, all you'd have to worry about would be hitting the target in the first place.

Nifty Construction

The construction of the Five-seveN pistol is pretty nifty. The slide is made of a stamping of chrome moly steel, with a machined steel breechblock segment, and covered with a polymer shroud. At first it looks as if the slide is polymer, but that is simply a protective cover.