The National Institute of Justice publishes the only ballistic standard recognized as authoritative by U.S. law enforcement. NIJ 0101.06 — first published in 2008 — defines five protection levels: IIA, II, IIIA, III, and IV. Each level specifies test rounds, velocity envelopes, and conditioning protocols.
Level IIIA defeats high-velocity handgun threats up to .44 Magnum SJHP at 1,430 ft/s. This is the most common rated soft armor sold in the U.S.
Level III defeats 7.62×51 NATO M80 ball at 2,780 ft/s. This is rifle-rated armor, and per NIJ protocol it is tested with six rounds per panel at specified strike-face geometries.
Level IV defeats .30-06 M2 Armor-Piercing at 2,880 ft/s. Level IV testing is single-hit per panel; multi-hit Level IV requires manufacturer-specific validation.
NIJ 0101.07 — the in-progress next revision — restructures the levels into HG1/HG2 for handgun threats and RF1/RF2/RF3 for rifle threats, with stricter environmental conditioning. We engineer our systems to current 0101.06 specifications while tracking the 0101.07 draft for next-generation product lines.
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