Affordable personal protection can be difficult to find, especially if you want it sourced outside of China and built to a trusted standard. Premier Body Armor is one of the few brands that meets these requirements and doesn’t cost an arm, leg or firstborn.
The Fortis Ballistic Helmet is in its second generation of design and is now offered in new colors (black, green, and tan). How does it stack up? Premier sent one out for us to try.
The Fortis Ballistic Helmet “meets” a level IIIA ballistic standard. But what does that actually mean?
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) publishes standards for body armor. These standards are extensive and exact for how body armor should be tested, what is needed to pass/fail the tests and what rating is given based on that testing. Helmets are covered under NIJ standard 0106.01 published in 1981.
There is the problem with these ratings. Because the helmet standards are so old, they are basically outdated and useless. These old standards only allow for levels I, IIA and II. Modern helmets have exceeded these standards for a long time.
So how can the Fortis claim to meet level IIIA? Since the NIJ standard is outdated for helmets, no one really uses it alone. Instead, most manufacturers test their helmets using a mix of the old helmet standards and the newer standards for body armor.
Premier Body Armor makes their testing reports available for you to read yourself if you want a look at the details. Bottomline, the Fortis Ballistic Helmet is rated for IIIA protection (up to .357 SIG and .44 Magnum protection).
To help keep costs down, the Fortis is imported from Thailand using non-Chinese materials. The facility making the helmets is ISO 9001-compliant (international standards for quality, reporting and material control), and every helmet comes clearly marked with information about where, when and what batch it was manufactured in to aid with quality control in the long term.
All of this is on the technical side and not very exciting, but it helps to show how some of the sausage is made when you’re looking at something designed to save your life.
Just about everyone has worn a helmet for sports like football, biking, climbing or one of a dozen others. One thing you quickly find is that helmets aren’t really ever comfortable to wear. Some might be better than others, but none of them are comfortable. If you haven’t worn a ballistic helmet yet, you might be surprised at just how much they suck to wear.
The average football helmet is four pounds, the average bike helmet is slightly under 1lb. The Fortis Ballistic Helmet is three pounds for S/M size and a bit heavier for the larger sizes. That might not sound too bad, but your neck will feel it if you’re new to the weight.
The good news is that the padding system used in the Fortis is pretty good. While aftermarket padding exists and most people who wear helmets a lot opt to upgrade the padding, the Fortis is the first helmet I’ve tried that I didn’t immediately buy better pads for. Perfect? No, but a lot better than you might expect.
No hot spots, no extended wear pain. Combined with the chin strap and rear tension dial, it kept the helmet in place is easy and as comfortable as a three-pound bucket can get. The pads are held in place using velcro, so replacing them isn’t hard if you choose to go that route.
For features, Fortis delivers everything you need. Not only does it have better than average padding, but it also includes a dial retention system that allows for a huge range of sizing. A 7075 NVG shroud fits standard G24 NVG mounts along with dual bungees built into the front. Along the side are 1913 MIL-STD compatible ARC rails that fit a huge host of accessories. The sides and top also have Velcro loop panels to accommodate other sorts of accessories or helmet covers.
All in, the Fortis Ballistic Helmet covers all the bases. Good comfort, NVG mounting, and rails and velcro for mounting extras.
With solid features, decent padding, and a good retention system, this helmet ticks all the boxes for me really well. It’s a tool, and it does the job well.
Protecting your head is one of the most important things you can do, generally. But for most of us, a fancy helmet isn’t a priority on the flowchart of must-buy items when you’re looking at personal protection. A ballistic helmet is even lower on the list.
If you need a mounting solution for NVGs, then a Crye Skullcap or a simple bump helmet with the right mounting hardware are far more comfortable to use and a whole lot cheaper.
On the other hand, a ballistic helmet is one of those things that when you need one — nothing else will substitute.
For military and law enforcement, the benefits of having a ballistic helmet are pretty obvious. For the rest of us, it might be a stretch. Most people who won’t be using a ballistic helmet professionally are getting it as a fashion piece first and a useful tool in that 0.00001% chance of SHTF as a very distant second.
The Fortis provides a quality helmet at a more affordable price. Maybe your department is small and doesn’t provide funds for ballistic helmets yet, maybe you’re a civilian that wants to cover all the bases, or maybe you need a ballistic helmet to round out your outfit at the next MILSIM event. For those people and more, this makes a lot more sense than shelling out $2,000 on a different helmet.
Forits delivers a lot of value, much more than even I expected. While I can’t say that buying one is a hard requirement for everyone to have, it is good to see an affordable option for those of us who want it.
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