NATO Standardized Method for Assessing the Skin Penetration of Kinetic Energy Non-Lethal Weapons

Kinetic energy non-lethal weapon (KENLW) systems remain one of the most widespread types of non-lethal weapons on the field. NATO has released four standardized documents in order to assess the injury potential of such weapons. These documents have been written by an international team of experts in the field of non-lethal weapons. Particularly, the AEP 94 from the STANREC 4744 focuses on the evaluation of the skin penetration of non-lethal projectiles based on a specific test validated using post mortem human subject (PMHS) tests. The proposed methodology is to shoot a projectile on a surrogate composed of three layers (chamois skin layer, a specific closed-cell foam and ballistic gelatine). The topic of this article consists in describing the standardized document in the form of a scientific article. Firstly, KENLWs and the resulting injuries are described through a literature study. Secondly, the assessment methodology and its scientific rationale are explained in detail. Thirdly, interlaboratory tests are conducted for validating the procedure, and ultimately AEP 94 implementations are presented. After that, the evaluation of commercially available KENLW is performed and results are compared to case reports from the literature. While correspondence is achieved, limitations and way ahead are identified and discussed.