OATH Tango First Look Review
As many of you who follow Clark Armory know, we have recently added Operators American Tactical Hardware (OATH) products to our lineup. OATH recently emerged onto the ammo manufacturing scene with their Halo (available for pistols and rifles) and Tango (available for pistols) ammunition lines both featuring machined brass or copper projectiles (you can read all about the company in our recent article, "An Interview with OATH Ammo"). I recently had the pleasure of taking some of OATH's 9mm Tango Ammo to the range to see first-hand how they functioned both in gun and on target. Here are my initial thoughts.
The Tangos perform quite well in the three main areas of concern, in the gun, in flight and on target.
Some of today's high-end self defense ammo has a reputation of feed failures but the OATH Tango had no such issues. To be fair, feed issues usually occur in sub-compacts or 1911's with the classically steep feed ramp, not in full-size metal range/duty guns but shooting Tangos felt like a light FMJ round. I give credit to the "nose cap" on the rounds which is intended to eliminate hollow point feeding issues.
Out of the barrel the Tangos averaged 1,137 fps. of their advertised 1,200 fps. Although I didn't like seeing them travel slower than advertised they were consistently between 1,130 and 1,140 fps.
To see if the Tangos open up like they are claimed to, I sank three rounds into an FBI standard 10% ballistics gel block. The base of each projectile penetrated to around 9 inches with the nose cap continuing on to 14-16 inches. One of the three rounds had a petal break off after it opened in the gel which seemed reduce the size of the primary wound channel but created a secondary channel. Some may like the additional wound channel, some may not, but I was surprised to see it happen. The other two projectiles opened up even more than advertise (see below) with their petals unfolding to be nearly flat with the base when viewed form the side. The spin of this shape did make an impressive permanent wound cavity from about 2 inches in the block to the final resting place of the projectile at ~9 inches.
I am sure in the coming months YouTube is going to be filled with detailed reviews and slow-motion ballistics gel shots of these rounds. My preliminary opinion is that these rounds do what they are made to do, feed smoothly and create a better-than-standard-hollow point permanent wound cavity in the first 9 inches.
~Sawyer