Army's Pistol Program Inexplicably Delayed... Again

 

  This is all very strange. The U.S. Army doesn’t know what it wants. One of the current complaints about the M9 Beretta is that the grip is too big for people with small hands, hence the requirement for modular grips. But trying to produce a one size fits all handgun that will fit people from 4’10” to 6’9” is not possible or at least not likely to be possible at a reasonable cost. Actually the M9 Beretta does most of what the Army, as well as the other services, wants a handgun to do these days. So does the Glock, the Sig-Sauer and even the old 1911 for that matter. The British Army recently adopted the Glock 17, Generation 4 model with changeable grips, in the standard NATO 9x19mm (AKA 9mm Luger) cartridge and thus far is very satisfied with it. On the one hand getting the contract to provide the official handgun for the U.S. Armed Forces is very lucrative in itself and would gain the winning company a huge number of civilian sales. Not to mention likely contracts with other countries. However from what the article says it appears that many of the major gun companies have grown  weary of getting jerked around by the U.S. Government with its complex and often contradictory demands and have chosen not to compete. Baring some the introduction of some new and different weapons technology it looks the Army is stuck at an impasse and collectively can’t figure out what it wants.

  It also appears that DOD may adopt hollow-point bullets for use in handguns, which would increase the stopping power of the 9x19mm cartridge to where it is on par with the .45 ACP cartridge formerly used by the U.S. military, and still allow the use of a relatively low-recoil impulse cartridge. Up ’til now the U.S. Military has scrupulously adhered to tenants of the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1908 which prohibits the use of hollow-point and soft-point bullets in warfare, even though the USA never signed the Hague Convention and the prohibition is only in effect in war between signatories to the convention. Given the nature of warfare and the fact that U.S. forces have been fighting mostly against non-state actors for the past 20 years the DOD is rethinking its policy.

 

 

The Modular Handgun System (MHS) to replaced the Beretta M9 has hit more snags, but no one seems to know why.

One of the first things I did at SHOW Show in Las Vegas was to hunt down the various companies vying for the U.S. Army’s Modular Handgun System (MHS) contract and try to get a sense of who was submitting for the January 28th deadline.
Official requirements for the XM17 program include:

• non-caliber specific
• modular grips
• grip that accepts a wide-range of hand-sizes (5th to 95th percentile)
• ability to accept different fire-control devices/action types
• ability to accept various magazine sizes
• suppressor compatible
• ability to mount “target enablers” (lights, lasers, etc) on a picatinny rail
• match-grade accuracy (90% or better chance 4″ circle at 50 meters)
• low felt recoil impulse

Predictably, every single company was very, very tight-lipped about their submissions, the conventional widsom is that that the following companies are going to participate.

• Beretta will likely submit a variant of their APX.
• Detonics/STI will submit their STX, a striker-fired 1911/Hi Power-based hybrid.
• General Dynamics/Smith & Wesson will likely submit a next generation variant of their M&P.
• Sig Sauer will submit a variant of their P320.

Glock has stated in the past that they’re going to compete…but I frankly think they’re bluffing unless they been able to keep something radically unlike anything they’ve ever developed under wraps. None of Glocks existing designs come close to meeting the specs of the RFP.
We’ve also heard rumors that Heckler & Koch were considering submitting a pistol, but later backed out after determining that, like Glock, they didn’t have a handgun that met RFP specs.
Ruger has previously announced that they would not compete.
None of these companies has openly stated which caliber they’ll submit in this open-caliber submission, but the smart money is on modern jacketed lead hollowpoints or solid-copper hollowpoints 9×19 cartridges, due to a requirement in the RFP to be compatible with some existing 9mm equipment in the military inventory.
We were hoping to discover which firearms were submitted on the 28th, and then the submission deadline was pushed back to February 1 because of the snowstorm, and pushed back yet again until February 12, for reasons that don’t appear clear.
Each company is submitting more than 30 pistols and 200 magazines for testing, along with ammunition and other accessories.
If anything like prior attempts to find the military a new handgun, we can expect years of testing, lawsuits, appeals by the companies who failed to win once a winner is declared.
Meanwhile, the military is being forced to make do with M9s that are literally wearing out.

http://bearingarms.com/armys-pistol-program-inexplicably-delayed/?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=