The NIJ certification of ballistic performance for body armor, including soft armor vest panels and hard rifle protection plates, is arguably the most critical gear evaluation process in the law enforcement profession. NIJ certification on your armor means this lifesaving product was tested at a lab that complies with the body armor testing standards of the National Institute of Justice, the research agency of U.S. Department of Justice. The armor products that pass the testing are certified to stop the rounds they are supposed to stop without causing too much trauma to the wearer and are added to the NIJ’s Compliant Products List kept on the agency’s website.

The NIJ certification process is voluntary, but its an essential step for any manufacturer that wants to sell plates and vests to the American law enforcement market. So the development of a new NIJ testing standard is a big deal. Since 1972 there have six revisions of the original standard, counting the current NIJ 0101.06 standard and the just announced NIJ 0101.07 standard.

Five Years

The 07 standard was proposed back in 2018. And at the time it looked like it was going to pass the industry comment process and move into the implementation phase very quickly. This was in direct contrast to the 06 standard (2009), which had the industry fuming because the evaluation process specified by the standard cost them more money in terms of samples of armor used and time spent on the testing processes than the previous 05 standard. The industry and some law enforcement advocates, including POLICE, also argued that the 06 standard vests would have to be thicker, stiffer, and just generally more uncomfortable, making it more likely that some officers would decline to wear them. Fortunately, new  lighter and more flexible ballistic materials made these concerns fade.

One of the primary goals of the 06 standard was to establish methods for testing whether the ballistic materials used in armor would remain protective with time and environmental exposure. This concern came about after armor panels made of Toyobo’s Zylon failed and one officer was killed and another was seriously wounded. The repercussions from the Zylon crisis caused great upheaval in the body armor manufacturing sector, driving a major player into bankruptcy and triggering a federal investigation. Investigators found that although Zylon was very effective at stopping handgun rounds when it was new, the protective qualities of the material degraded over time and under certain environmental conditions. The NIJ’s 06 standard was a reaction to that crisis, an attempt to ensure that all armor rated to stop certain rounds would indeed stop those rounds.  

In contrast, the 07 standard was not born of crisis. So after the standard was proposed, the industry had some concerns, but it did not rise up to resist its implementation like it did for 06. What did rise up to delay the 07 standard was COVID.

“We were meeting in March 2020, and we had some visits to the laboratories scheduled. Then by the middle of that month, we couldn’t travel, not even locally,” says Dr. Mark Greene, director of the NIJ’s Office of Technology and Standards. “We weren’t able to get back on the road until May 2022.” Greene stresses that the pandemic did not shut down his team’s work. “At some point you have to step foot in the laboratory,” he explains.

The pandemic was not the only cause for delay. Comments from the industry and from other concerned parties did lead to some technical issues that had to be addressed. “We engage all the stakeholders in the community, the companies, the law enforcement officers and agencies, and the laboratories,” Greene says.

One of the changes that affects the industry and particularly the labs is that the test methods were developed using ASTM International (formerly American Society for Testing and Materials) standards. Adopting ASTM standards will make the testing methodology more uniform from laboratory to laboratory, according to Greene.

The transition to ASTM standards and other testing adjustments are unlikely to have any direct impact on law enforcement officers and other wearers of NIJ-certified ballistic armor. Two major changes in the 07 standard will, however, affect you. The 07 standard changes the process for testing armor designed for females and it has the potential to forever change how experts and agencies discuss the ballistic performance vests and plates.

 Non-Planar Armor

Making armor for female officers requires accommodating their breasts. That’s a simple enough process, as most body armor manufacturers just build cups into the vest. The process of building the cups involves darting, which is folding and stitching the material and creating an overlap. And therein lies the problem.

You would think that overlapping layers of ballistic material would create more effective armor, but that’s not always true. "Energy transfer works best when the material is laid flat so that the energy can dissipate throughout the fibers. When you introduce folds and crimps, energy tends to bounce back because it doesn't flow out and away from the impact point." John MacNeil, then director of ballistic research and development at Armor Express, said in 2018.

Because of the effects of darting, the NIJ determined that labs needed better methods for testing female armor or non-planar armor; the 07 standard specifies those methods. This is especially critical when testing backface deformation, a term the armor industry uses for how far the bullet pushes the vest into the wearer’s skin, muscle, and even bones. Backface deformation determines how much trauma the bullet causes when it doesn’t penetrate the armor. Reducing backface deformation requires the armor to dissipate the bullet’s energy in a wide area rather than absorbing it all at the point of impact.

New Names

The most visible aspect of the new NIJ standard is that it changes the rating categories for ballistic armor. For decades armor has been spoken of in terms of NIJ levels such as IIA, II, IIIA, III, and so on. It’s a confusing systems of Roman numerals and the letter A that sometimes even forces experts to pause and think about which one offers the most protection. For the record IIA offers less ballistic protection than II and IIIA offers way less protection than III. The new standard does away with all that.

From now on, NIJ certified body armor, including soft armor and hard plates, will be categorized as “HG” for handgun and “RF” for rifle. Under this new system, HG1 stops the same threats as Level II and HGII stops the same threats as Level IIIA. Armor with the performance of Level IIA will no longer be NIJ certified.

For rifle protection, RF1 is the equivalent of Level III and RF III is the equivalent of Level IV. The interesting new category is RF2. For a long time armor makers have been marketing some hard armor as Level III-plus. In most cases, this has meant the manufacturer tested the armor against the Level III threats plus the M855 (green tip) 5.56mm NATO round. Level III-plus was not an NIJ certified protection level, but it will be now under the RF2 category.

NIJ officials realize that all the Roman numeral designations for armor protection will probably persist for some time to come, but they see the new nomenclature as a way to speak more precisely about armor.

It will probably take 12 to 18 months before you will see 07 standard body armor on the market. But that’s not something to worry about.

The adoption of the 07 armor standard does nothing to change the performance of your current 06 compliant armor. “The 06 armor is still good,” says NIJ’s Greene. “Wear your armor. It will save your life.”