The work aims to summarize the current research progress on impact damage modes and failure mechanisms of light metal alloys and composite laminates subject to hyper velocity impact loads. A large amount of relevant literature was collected and summarized and the latest research progress was sorted out and summarized from experimental techniques, experimental phenomena of visibility of light alloys under hyper velocity impact, and microstructure evolution mechanism of materials under high strain rate load. The shortcomings of current research on hyper velocity impact properties of light alloys are pointed out and some suggestions are put forward for future research directions, which can provide reference for future research directions of lightweight protective structure design in this field.