FN's Five-seveN Pistol

J

J33Nelson

New member
I read an article on this handgun and it looks incredible. I was wondering if anyone has shot this handgun or has bought it or is thinking about buying it?? I am not even sure if it is sold in the U.S.A yet... It has a 20 round clip and fires a 5.7x28mm bullet.

Here is a little clip from the article I read...
"The Five-seveN® fires the SS190 5.7x28mm ball round. This projectile will perforate any individual protection on today's battlefield including the PASGT kevlar helmet, 48 layers of kevlar body armor and the CRISAT target (titanium and kevlar). "


SigPro 2034 .357
 
From what I have heard, it -won't- be sold on the civilian market due to its "armor piercing" ability.
 
Before I quit my old department, us 'ninjas' got to play with one a couple times. It is probably the most accurate pistol I have ever fired. We were doing 1/2" 10-shot groups at 10yrds freehand. I wouldn't want it as my sidearm, though. Yes, it goes through angle iron like SS109, but I don't trust a 32gr projectile for STOPPING power. Give me a .45 any day. The trigger was nice (on the heavy side), and they had promised not to 'improve' it like they did the Forty-Niner. For having a 20-round mag, it was about as heavy as a Glock 22. The grip reminded me of a Desert Eagle 357 in size. Not a lot of fun if you have small hands. All-in-all, nice toy, but too expensive for most departments to USE (training cost at about 0.33 per round).

Almost forgot----LOOOOONG trigger.
 
The Five Seven uses the same ammo as the P90 SMG and several different rounds are available. During one test on a police issue bullet proof vest at 50 yards, a ball round penetrated front and back, so they taped 2 vests together and tried again, the report I read stated that incredibly the round went through all 4 vest panels. Whilst this is a lot to swallow, there can be no doubt that the round is a phenomenal penetrator and LEO's are understandably nervous.

I am surprised that the officer above who tried one out found the trigger to be "nice" as all previous comments I have read indicated that the trigger action in DA is the guns worst feature, closely followed by the grip. I do agree however that the bullet is somewhat on the light side. As with .357 Sig, only time will tell.

Mike H
 
Yeah, FN tends to make very good pre-production guns. Then, they start 'improving' them. I didn't get to shoot a production gun, but the pre gun trigger was very smooth, just long. In a tactical situation, I prefer a heavy trigger, and the letoff on this thing was extremely crisp with no 'jump'. Of course, the trigger on the pre-production Forty-Niner was smooth, too, and look what they did with that when it went into production.....Took forever to convince them it was screwed up.

As to being afraid of the round, yeah, VERY. It made shooting from the stack a very tense exercise.
 
The 5.7x28 is the bottleneck cartridge FN chambers the P90 subgun and Five-seveN pistol for.

31 gr FMJ at 2329 fps from the P90, and 1971 from the pistol.

Plugging it into the Fuller Index (humor me) we get:

P90 12 inches bare gel, 9.25 cloth, 9.75 after IIA Kevlar

An estimated OSS of 70%

The pistol does 7.75, 9.0, 6.0

OSS of 60%

Great for wounding troops, not stopping BGs ASAP? Would a JHP be better? Worse?

Does not seem even close to the 223/5.56 or 224 Boz.

A blast from the past:

Latest issue of IWBA Wound Ballistics Review has the following article: "Wound profile of the 5.7x28mm FN Cartridge (SS 190) fired from the FN P90 submachine
gun," by three ballistics researchers with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The results: The average depth of bullet penetration in all test events (bare gelatin, gelatin covered with heavy clothing, and gelatin covered with level II soft body armor) was 10.4" with no bullet deformation and fissures created by temporary cavitation not greater than 3.75".

"The SS 190 31 grain bullet as fired through the FN P90 submachine gun has a very limited penetration profile with no bullet deformation as tested and is probably not as effective as many hollowpoint handgun ammunitions, except in
its ability to defeat soft body armor. Fackler, contradicting FN's claims, best describes the performance of the ammunition relative to the 9mm stating '...the expanded 9mm bullet strikes about three times as much issue as the P-90 bullet at 90 degrees of yaw -- and does it throughout most of its path. Thus, the permanent cavity volume produced by the expanded 9mm bullet is many
times larger than that produced by the nondeforming P-90 bullet.'"

Respectfully yours,

/s/ Shawn Dodson
Firearms Tactical Institute
http://www.firearmstactical.com
e-mail: director@firearmstactical.com
 
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