9mm Trajectory Chart vs .40 S&W Trajectory Chart

BC- ballistic coefficient | gr- grain | FMJ- Full Metal Jacket | fps- feet per second

We did a recent range test comparing the muzzle velocity and bullet drop between the SUB-2000 in 9mm and .40 S&W and their Glock Pistol Counterparts that use the same magazines.

With this chart there are two distinct comparisons to be made here. This first is 9mm Trajectory vs .40 S&W Trajectory and the second is the Muzzle Velocity differences between the different barrel lengths when shooting the same standard ammunition.

First take notice that the 9mm Luger 115 gr FMJ (Blue and Black Lines on graph) drops at a much faster rate then the .40 S&W 135 gr FMJ (Red and Teal Lines on graph) after 40 yards. The flattest trajectory for both rounds is from 0 - 40 yards, after that the 9mm starts dropping at a much more rapid rate than the .40 S&W.

Now if we use the same ammunition and fire both from a pistol and a pistol caliber carbine we see a very interesting correlation between the barrel length and muzzle velocity. In this test we used the same exact ammunition and found that when shooting 9mm Luger 115 gr FMJ out of our Glock 17 with a ~4.5" barrel the muzzle velocity was 1,094 fps and when we fired the same exact ammunition out of our SUB-2000 with a 16" barrel the muzzle velocity increased to 1,295 fps. That's a difference of 201 fps in terms of muzzle velocity with just a 11.5" longer barrel over the pistol, that translates into 3 inches less bullet drop at 100 yards with the SUB-2000. The same is true when we compared the SUB-2000 and the Glock 22 while shooting .40 S&W 135 gr FMJ out of both firearms. The SUB-2000 with a 16" barrel produced a muzzle velocity of 1,398 fps and the Glock 22 with a ~5.5" barrel produced a muzzle velocity of 1,233 fps. That's a difference of 165 fps in muzzle velocity with just a 10.5" longer barrel when shooting the exact same ammo. As you can see in the chart the increase gives the SUB-2000 2 inches less bullet drop at 100 yards when directly compared to the Glock 22 pistol.

As you can see there is a direct relationship between muzzle velocity and barrel length. The 16" pistol caliber carbine out performed the pistol counterparts at longer ranges due to the increased barrel length and increased muzzled velocity. There was a lot less bullet drop experienced with SUB-2000 than the pistol counterparts when firing the exact same ammo.