You mean to say you directed its KE to go in a specific direction, which gives the momentum. You don't "direct" momentum. You use energy to impart a direction to mass.
You said "momentum is direction". Sort of. A better way to state it is: momentum is the description of energy in motion.
No, you impart energy to a mass to produce motion. Rotational, orbital, elliptical. Once in motion, that object will have KE and momentum.
I know I didn't say it correctly on a technical basis, I was trying to make the concept simple enough to be understood. But still, momentum is a vector factor. A vector is direction. When we aim an arrow to go in a certain direction (or to say it another way, on a specific vector), then the whole MO/KE package goes with it.
It is more correct to say that momentum is a form of inertia. Newton's First Law of Motion. aka the law of inertia: "An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." The higher the mass the more inertia, so the more force it takes to move it. Also, the more force it takes to stop it when it's in motion.
The part we're interested in, when talking penetration, is keeping our arrows from stopping once they're in motion. Right? Notice that KE is not mentioned.