Fiber-metal laminates (FMLs) are key to modern composite structures and metal-compositecoupling is crucial to improve their effectiveness. Cold-metal transfer (CMT) PIN welding,in correlated efforts, has been successfully explored as a metal-composite hybrid joiningapproach. This work proposes a novel development on FMLs, which consists of introducingmetal pins welded by CMT PIN for anchoring their metal and composite layers together.Thus, miniaturized FML panels with different pin deposition spacing and patterns are evaluatedwith emphasis in drop-weight testing followed by buckling and by means of Iosipescushear test as complement. They are also subjected to cosmetic and preliminary modal analyses.Besides not adding significant weight, the pins does not make the panels more brittleand their distribution does not imply significant effect in the capacity that the panels have todissipate impact. The panels with pins exhibit a less catastrophic trend, indicating damagetolerance improvement as significantly higher loads at longer axial displacements in bucklingtest after impact are achieved. The anchoring effect of the pins is confirmed throughoutthe shear test results. The pins also significantly increase the damping factor of the panelsand the changes in their metal surfaces by the CMT PIN process are considered as irrelevant.