Fiber reinforced composite materials are used increasingly in many military and civil applications due to their excellent mechanical properties like high specific strength, specific stiffness, resistance to corrosion, increased fatigue life among others. However, one of the main concerns in the use of advanced composites is their poor translaminar properties, which become critical under situations like impact loading. Composites that are used in aerospace and land based structural components are often subjected to high velocity impact threats like broken engine parts, turbine blades, fragments from bombs, shells, mortars, …etc. In this work, the energy absorbed due to impact of small rigid projectile on composite materials targets is studied analyticaly and experimentally. Analytically, the energy absorbed due to impact of conical nose projectiles on composite laminates is investigated. Four types of observed energies are studied. They are the strain energy due to deformation of plate (contact energy), the large deformation near the impact zone, the delamination energy and the energy losses due to friction.