Small Arms Protective Insert

The Kevlar Interceptor vest itself is designed to stop projectiles up to and including 9×19mm Parabellum submachine gun rounds, in addition to fragmentation.

[5] The X Threat Small Arms Protective Insert plates are specifically allowed scalar or flexible systems, and asked for better coverage, with less than a pound of additional weight.

[8] The XSAPI is intended to protect against an "X-Threat",[9] which is able to be inferred from another source to be the M993 7.62 NATO armor piercing tungsten carbide projectile.

Military testing calls for survivability of three hits from the round marked on the plate - for standard SAPI, of a caliber up to 7.62 NATO M80 ball and of a muzzle velocity up to 2,750 ft (230 m)/s (840 m/s).

[14] ESBI or Enhanced S-SAPI plates can be replaced with size X-Small ESAPI plates (by unfolding an extension built into the bottom of the ESBI Carrier assembly for the U.S. Army and the S-SAPI Carrier assembly for U.S. Marines for OTVs), if permitted by the unit commander.

The Spectra backing then spreads the energy of the impact to a larger area and stops the fragments, reducing the likelihood of fatal injury to the wearer.

It is a false assumption that eliminating the penetration of a projectile into the body by using a personal armor system ensures that the wearer will not experience serious injury or death.