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.

The barrel is also chrome moly steel. It is a two-piece design with a very interesting set of features. When you first look, it's obvious that the 4.9" long rifled barrel segment has two diameters. The main body is 0.61" OD which is reduced to 0.39" to fit into a sleeve that serves as a locking block.

But the really interesting thing is how the FN engineers managed the recoil spring. The aft end goes inside the locking block sleeve which serves to contain the back end of the recoil spring. The front end is contained within a tapered bushing that mates with a corresponding taper in the slide.

With the slide retracted it appears as if there is a small bushing, but that actually is a spring snap-ring that holds the spring captive. When you field strip the pistol, the entire barrel assembly comes out as one piece.

The frame has some pretty clever engineering too. Unlike many polymer frames that have steel rails molded on, this one has a rear assembly that contains a pair of rails along with parts of the trigger mechanism. The forward portion of the frame (the dust cover) has an integral rail that engages a slot cut in the slide.

This form of connection eliminates the need for a second set of slide rails in the frame, but would seem to be even more stable. Everywhere you look on the pistol is evidence of advanced engineering and thoughtful design.

The operating mechanism is described as "delayed blowback." With most blowback designs, the barrel is permanently affixed to the frame, but the Five-seveN has a slot that permits the barrel to move rearward with the slide about 0.1". A part of the locking block in the frame is spring loaded and bears upon the back of the barrel. The spring tension also provides some delay.

The trigger is double-action only and is among the worst I've ever seen. It isn't overly heavy, at 10 lbs., but it is abysmally long and creepy so that it feels a lot worse than it is. Actually, I'm sure that this is a deliberate design feature. FN informs me that a single-action trigger module will be available, but it was not designed to please gunwriters or target shooters, but to be safe in a combat environment.

Terminal Ballistics

The thought may have occurred to you that the cartridge is not proven on the street. When the .40 S&W was first announced, the naysayers used the very fact that it was new to condemn it out of hand. In so doing they were a bit shortsighted for nothing can be "proven on the street" until it's out on the street.

The Five-seveN surely may fail, but nobody really knows until it's tried. We rely on theory and laboratory testing since it isn't socially acceptable to do the kind of field testing that provides gut piles worth of information.

We were, however, able to test the Five-seveN by shooting into bare gelatin, gelatin covered with the FBI's standard "heavy clothing" and finally covered with IIA soft body armor.

For someone accustomed to full metal jacket bullets zipping through several feet of gelatin, the 5.7x28 was an eye-opener. We first fired at bare 10 percent gelatin and I fully expected the bullet to penetrate the entire length of the 12" block. It did not. Instead the bullet came to rest 7.75" into the block, but it had tracked upward about 2.5" from the point of entry. The permanent wound cavity was 2.75" in diameter.

When FBI standard heavy clothing (t-shirt, flannel shirt, down filled denim jacket) was put in front of the block, penetration was 9" in a straight line, but the permanent cavity was exactly the same.

The final test put a panel of threat level IIA kevlar in front of the block. This time penetration was 6", but there was no measurable difference in the permanent wound cavity.

There will be some who wonder if this is enough penetration. This is a real good question and one for which there is no "right" answer. The FBI insists on a minimum of 12" penetration. When you talk about customary handgun velocities, penetration is needed to get adequate tissue damage, however, the 5.7's velocity levels are into the rifle category where hydrostatic force becomes a significant part of the wounding process.

During Handgunner's testing the pistol functioned flawlessly, but the really remarkable aspect was the near absence of recoil. The tiny cartridge is very efficient, but even though the pistol is light, recoil is little more than a .22 rimfire in the same weight gun.

Recoil is the enemy for the average law enforcement officer. The Five-seveN delivered 1.8 ft./lbs. of free recoil energy from a pistol that only weighs 22 ozs. (with empty magazine). A full ammo load of 21 rounds raises that to 26.5 ozs. and cuts recoil to 1.4 ft./lbs.

Accuracy Testing

In spite of the difficult trigger pull it was possible to shoot 25 yard groups that averaged 2.1" for five, five-shot groups. The combination of light recoil and good accuracy make the Five-seveN a very handy gun to have around.

It's too bad that the cartridge isn't publically available, but it has been ruled to he "non-sporting" by ATF and can only be sold to agencies, just like the guns.

This is a shame. The 5.7mm has tremendous potential in guns like the Contender for real accuracy in the hunting field or target range.

At this time there is only one source of ammunition, but an agreement has been signed between FN and Winchester for the American ammo giant to load the 5.7x28. FN reports that initial loadings will be done using components supplied by FN, but that Winchester may make the cartridge at a later date.

It doesn't take much imagination to see this cartridge changing the direction of law enforcement weaponry in the new millennium. The Five-seveN might well serve as standard issue for officers in a crowded urban setting and the P-90 could be used by special teams and thus retain commonality of ammunition.

P-90 Five-seveN
Velocity 2,328 fps 1,971 fps
Bare Gelatin 12"+ 7.75"
FBI Heavy Clothing 9.25" 9.0"
IIA Kevlar 9.75" 6.0"

COPYRIGHT 2000 Publishers' Development Corporation
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group