Fiocchi's New Covert X Ammunition is Designed for Defense

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We’ve said it before here at Shooting Times, but it remains true that for personal protection and home defense, the proper ammunition choice can literally be a life-or-death decision, especially if the handgun being used is a short-barreled gun. Fiocchi has a new line of self-defense ammunition that is specifically created for short-barreled handguns. Called CovertX, this new line of ammo is assembled in the U.S.A. It features a new, proprietary jacketed hollowpoint bullet. The bullet design includes a heavy copper jacket with skives at the nose and precut serrations in the lead-alloy core. The serrations and the skives allow optimal, consistent expansion at short-barrel velocities. The new ammo also utilizes powders specifically selected for reduced flash and muzzle flip. And all offerings are loaded in nickel-plated brass cases. Fiocchi proudly says the new CovertX line of ammunition “redefines concealed carry.”

The Makeup

The new CovertX ammo is offered in .380 Auto, 9mm Luger, .38 Special +P, .357 Magnum, and .45 ACP. The .380 Auto ammo is loaded with a 95-grain JHP bullet, and its velocity is rated at 1,015 fps. The 9mm Luger ammo is loaded with a 124-grain JHP bullet, and its velocity is rated at 1,115 fps. The .38 Special +P ammo is loaded with a 125-grain JHP bullet, and its velocity is rated at 1,100 fps. The .357 Magnum ammo also is loaded with a 125-grain JHP bullet, and its velocity is rated at 1,425 fps. And the .45 Auto ammo is loaded with a 230-grain JHP bullet, and its velocity is rated at 875 fps. All chamberings are packaged in 20-round boxes.

I was able to obtain shooting samples of all five CovertX loads, so I put them to an accuracy and velocity shooting test in five of my very own personal guns. I own exactly two .380 Auto pistols, and the one I used for this report is a SIG SAUER P238 with a 2.7-inch barrel. It’s the Emperor Scorpion version, so it wears a Flat Dark Earth finish and black G10 grip panels, and it has SIGLITE night sights. I have a Crimson Trace Laserguard with green laser installed on it. I think it is a perfect platform for testing concealed-carry ammunition because it is very small and eminently concealable.

The 9mm Luger pistol I chose for this test is the Springfield Hellcat Pro with 3.7-inch barrel and Hex red-dot rear sight. I own a half-dozen 9mm pistols, and I must admit that I have never been a huge fan of the chambering. I know it has a lot going for it, and some say it is the most popular handgun cartridge of them all these days. My favorite personal 9mm pistol is a Springfield SA-35 Hi-Power, but since it is a full-size pistol and this new Fiocchi ammunition is specifically designed for smaller, concealed-carry-type pistols, I thought the Hellcat Pro would make a better platform for this report. Also, it happens to be the shortest-barreled 9mm pistol I own.

I fired the new Fiocchi .38 Special +P and .357 Magnum ammo in the same revolver. It is a Smith & Wesson Model 586 with a ported 3.0-inch barrel and a seven-shot cylinder. I am a big fan of the .38 Special cartridge, so of course, I own several other .38 Special/.357 Magnum revolvers, but like the 9mm Hellcat Pro, this Model 586 has the shortest barrel in my battery. And it just happens to be an S&W Performance Center gun, so it has a very smooth, consistent trigger pull, and it has proved to be very accurate with many brands of ammunition.

I am an avid fan of the .45 Auto cartridge and Model 1911 pistols in general. (I’m not bragging, but I own way more than I probably should, including models chambered for .22 LR, .22 TCM, .38 Special, .38 Super, .357 Sig, .40 S&W, 10mm Auto, and .45 Auto. In some cases, like the .45 Auto and .38 Super, I have multiple Model 1911s.) The .45 Auto pistol I used here is a Ruger SR1911 with a 4.25-inch Commander-length barrel. I’ve shot this SR1911 quite a bit, and I’ve always been able to shoot it pretty darn well, so I thought I would use it here. It’s not the shortest-barreled .45 Auto Model 1911 I own. That distinction goes to my old mid-1980s-vintage Colt Officer’s ACP, which has a 3.6-inch barrel. But the Officer’s ACP can be finicky with some ammunition, both in function and in accuracy, while the SR1911 has always been 100 percent reliable and usually turns in satisfactory accuracy.

Range Results

So, how did the new Fiocchi concealed-carry ammo perform? In a word, it did well. I had no malfunctions with any of the rounds. All fed, fired, extracted, and ejected without a single hiccup. Full disclosure, I was only able to secure one box of the .380 Auto, one box of the .38 Special +P, and one box of the .357 Magnum ammo in time for this report. I got my hands on four boxes of the 9mm Luger ammo and two boxes of the .45 Auto ammo. Since all chamberings come in 20-round boxes, my results are based on firing just 20 rounds of each load. I understand that that is not an extensive test, but I believe it is indicative of what other shooters can expect when they test this new ammo themselves. By the way, I used 10 rounds for the velocity results and 10 rounds for the accuracy results. I fired two, five-shot groups at 25 yards for accuracy and averaged those groups, and I used a Competition Electronics ProChrono Digital chronograph with indoor lighting setup placed 12 feet from the guns’ muzzles to record the velocity data.

Speaking of velocity, my actual shooting results were less than the factory-rated figures. No surprise there because I’m sure my chronograph setup is different than what Fiocchi uses. But know this: My results for the .380 Auto, 9mm Luger, and .45 Auto were darn close to 90 percent of what the factory values are. And the extreme spreads and standard deviations were quite good, with none of the extreme spreads more than 32 fps and none of the standard deviations more than 18 fps. The .38 Special +P and .357 Magnum velocities were a different story.

The figures I achieved were much less than the factory-rated figures. In fact, they were somewhere between 80 percent and 85 percent of the factory-rated figures. The extreme spreads were surprisingly high, with the .357 Magnum load almost reaching three digits. I know the barrel-cylinder gap on a revolver can affect a load’s velocity, and I can only assume that my revolver’s barrel port also affected these velocities negatively. I’ll note that the standard deviations were not out of line, and the accuracies were in the acceptable range. The .38 Special +P’s accuracy was actually pretty good, and the .357 Magnum load’s accuracy was under the well-accepted old self-defense standard of 4.25 inches at 25 yards. At 3.00 inches at 25 yards, the 9mm Luger and .45 Auto accuracies were quite good, and at 3.75 inches, the .380 Auto’s accuracy also was good. In addition, each of the 9mm Luger groups had three shots clustered within less than 1 inch.

I wasn’t able to capture expanded bullets because I simply don’t have a setup for that. However, according to my contact at Fiocchi, the new proprietary bullet in all calibers exhibits picture-perfect expansion in ballistic gelatin. The accompanying photograph, courtesy of Fiocchi, shows that.

All in all, Fiocchi’s new CovertX concealed-carry ammunition is good ammunition. Personal-protection ammunition has undergone a lot of development over the past several years, and shooters have benefited from the results. And now we have another choice from Fiocchi that is specifically engineered for use in short-barreled, easy-to-conceal handguns. 

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