“Whatever new handgun the Army adopts to replace the M9, it will fire a more powerful cartridge than the Beretta’s 9mm. This could be the .45-caliber ammo currently used by the Marines or, according to an Army spokesperson, it could be the .357 SIG or .40 S&W, two cartridges that didn’t exist in the ’80s, and which were developed for law enforcement officers to counter increasingly well-armed criminals. It might be quite some time before the Army selects a winning design and awards the new contract. Once they do, you can expect to find an almost indistinguishable pistol in a gun shop near you.” – Matt Valentine in ‘How Military Guns Make the Civilian Market’ [at theatlantic.com]
Hmmm,
Never really cared for the Beretta’s long trigger, or the external safety.
I’ll be happy to wait.
Unless the military changes it’s policies the new pistol will have an external safety AND the troops will be required to carry with the chamber empty (thereby negating the long trigger pull since chambering a round will leave it in SA). Something about 18 year olds fresh off the farm (or out of the hood) handling handguns makes the army nervous.
Not sure the entire military carries that way. In the Marines I carried in condition one, and that was standard whenever the Beretta was issued with ammo, for ammo and equipment escort, outside the wire, or OOD
Coast Guard. I carried a 92 with one in the pipe, hammer down, safety on.
Air Force we carried one in the Chamber, hammer down, safety off.
I stand corrected then. I think that’s been the army’s policy since the days of the SAA.
You know I might be wrong about the condition of the safety. I remember chambering a round and decocking the thing. That might have been it.
Its been awhile.. USCG switched to Sig’s in 40. I don’t know what they do now. I’m not sure if the 220’s they have even come with an external safety.
Agreed, my experience in the USMC was the same – always carried handguns in condition one. At the time, we carried 1911 platform in .45 cal.
Directed at Chris et al: The Air Force still carries the M9 with a round chambered, hammer down, safety off.
The way they are issued bugs me a little bit, though. We don’t refill the mag after chambering the first round, so the mag in the gun is a round short.
M9 or M11 on the hip, shoulder or LBE is Condition 1. Round chambered, safety on or decocked. In the flight vest, magazine in, no round in the chamber. But that’s a different scenario.
And, as has been stated repeatedly, if they’d actually train them adequately, it wouldn’t be a problem.
By the way, nice stereotyping, thanks. Don’t be a bigot.
Anti-teenage bigotry?
Just looking at the wide angle photo, an upsized M9 in .50AE sounds intriguing.
‘How Military Guns Make the Civilian Market’-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahaha, oh man. My sides. Here I fixed it for him: ‘How Civilian Guns Make the Military Market’. Now this can’t be taken literal, of course some designs are intended solely for the military. But a lot of military products R&D is performed in the civilian sector.
Crowd-sourced beta-testing is free, effective, and profitable. Unless you release an absolute lemon like the R-51.
Well, it was free and effective, but Remington produced such a lemon that the testing resulted in an F- grade.
+1 on that. The manufacturers will take their successful civilian models, put some tacticool mil.dot rails and coloration on it, and sell it to the military as the latest and best. Hey, the civilian market has already done extensive testing for the manufacturers, why take a chance on a new design for the military testing phase?
“and sell it to the military as the latest and best”
…and sell it to the military
as the latest and bestat 10X list price.There. Fixed it for you. 😉
This is the 3rd article in 3 days saying almost exactly the same thing. Can’t remember the 1st but the other one was at Yahoo’s FINANCE section of all places.
Ignorance all around. Not one informed opinion anywhere. I don’t mind that they’re antigun and trying to paint guns in a bad light. They are entitled to their opinion. That said, do a little homework and not just spout what you think will happen.
There are plenty of handguns ALREADY available on the open market, including the calibers mentioned in the article. Whatever the Army selects, it is likely its equivalent already exists and is already in civilian hands. There is nothing that will cause any increase in crime or suddenly become more available to criminals.
Saw the one on Yahoo–still there this AM. @6000 comments, best I can tell uniformly of the opinion that the article is absolute claptrap of the most transparent and ignorant sort. Is there a new anti-gun meme in the making?
Isn’t there always!
6000 comments? That many people still use Yahoo?
Oh my! Military guns in the hands of criminals! I would be able to stand behind a 357 auto pistol though. Just sounds fun plus it would give the government an excuse to spend a bunch of money to replace the 9mm they will either give away to a third world country or destroy.
I think I heard Bloomie suggest they look to using .22, Lead free bullets. Something about being ‘enviromentally freindly and less scarry’ …..
Then again 50cal or 410 shells do sound more impressive in a ‘more is more’ manner.
Did is hear 410 shells? That’s it! A Taurus Judge for all!
22’s sound pretty dangerous.
How about nerf guns and water pistols with dye to mark your target, and water balloons with soap?
How many people are actually shot with pistols in warfare? The 9mm works fine, the 45, 40, or 357sig offer no big advantage. Agreed there are better designs on the market, but the money would be better spent on training.
Probably why this doesn’t seem like a priority project. The word is that many of the Berettas are worn out after 30 years and they simply need a replacement.
ESPECIALLY with ball ammo.
-Vu
^^^ This
.357 Sig actually does have an advantage over the other rounds: intermediate barrier penetration.
Does that matter to me?
Not so much, but in urban combat scenarios it just might.
Is it worth the extra cost?
To me, as an individual. Not really.
To me as a taxpayer, well no one’s asking me, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
If you only have ball ammo to shoot; I would want the biggest diameter bullet to shoot.
But what up with that? It’s OK to get blown up, burned, chewed to pieces by a mini-gun, but it’s inhumane to get shot with a hollow point bullet.
Never made much sense.
So we obey a convention that we did not sign, but go against every rule and law and torture people.
Going ‘around’ is easier. We don’t torture people, we just hand people off to people who do torture and then tell us what they found out.
Also we torture. But we don’t call it that, so it doesn’t count.
Yeah; I voted for Bush the younger the first time; but when he lied to invade Iraq and then when he Ok’d “enhanced interrogation” (water boarding) ie Torture; and all the “conservative” commentators were all supportive of it, I knew we as a country had crossed to the dark side.
On top of which; we still have NDAA; arrest without charges, denied Habeas Corpus, indefinite detention- Military drones in the skies, NSA copying all of our phone call and E-mails, cameras everywhere.
How the mighty have fallen.
Bush did say “They” hate us for our freedoms; we should be OK now because we have thrown away most the freedoms that made us unique and now we have most of the hall marks of every third world dictatorship set in place; they just haven’t come into general use; yet.
I don’t have sympathy for non-U.S. personnel overseas who engage in acts of terrorism and are not protected under law of land warfare. If they are known to have specific information we need, than “enhanced” interrogations should be allowed. Not all the time, but it should be an option once every other option has been exhausted. Trying to use certain provisions as blanket protection is no more effective than trying to apply the U.S. Constitution and rule of law to foreigners in other countries.
“‘Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,’ he wrote. In all respects the prisoners were to be treated no worse than American soldiers; and in some respects, better. Through this approach, Washington sought to shame his British adversaries, and to demonstrate the moral superiority of the American cause.”
We are supposed to be better YD, than those we are fighting. George Washington, despite fighting one of the greatest military powers of the time; believed we should be the ones with a higher and more just treatment towards those we were at war with.
There really is only one way to tell who the bad guys are in war. That is by how the helpless, powerless, defenseless and the fighters that have been captured by the respectives combatants are treated. I know how I was taught to believe about those third world countries. I was taught to believe that what made us, the US, different, better than those third world dictatorships was that we didn’t torture our prisoners; no matter how brutal, how blood thirsty those “savages” might be, we would treat them humanely.
Now, we are the ones torturing those third world “savages”, thus, becoming savages ourselves.
Yep, like I said, How the mighty have fallen.
We’re not torturing/waterboarding terrorists… we’re baptizing them with Freedom.
Did I miss a CarniK Con video? Congratulations, that’s the first time I’ve ever managed to laugh at the way we do things.
If it doesn’t cause permanent physical damage it’s not “torture”.
“Once they do”? Shouldn’t that be “As of right now”? Do we really expect the winning design to be that fundamentally different than the civilian market in those calibers?
First time in over 100 years that the .mil carries a revolver?
.38s were issued as service weapons as late as the 90s. My first issued weapon (non training) was a .38 wheel gun.
My understanding is that Army “spotter” pilots flying Grasshoppers and Sentinels in WWII carried .38 revolvers.
The holster on the SV2 vests were made for a revolver and it was used for probably a quarter century. I have been told that the rationale for revolvers was that they weighed less, would be affected less by immersion in water, and would be easier to manipulate if injured. I can buy some of that…but not all.
I’ve seen pics of guys from WW2 through Desert Storm carrying both revolvers and .45s.
Somebody should tell Mr. Valentine that which ever gun and caliber the Army chooses it is already found on the shelf. This isn’t 1907 where somehting new had to be developed to meet their requirements.
To be fair, they started the preliminary development around 1900, and it took till 1911 to get it perfect, but you’re right. Look at the USMC’s new M45 pistol. they didn’t just adopt the .45 auto, they adopted the original platform for the round.
That is a different story but it is why I believe the Army will choose the same Pistol. The contract is for up to 12,000 M45s which is a big enough buy to set up a high volume production line. It will be just too tempting from a cost standpoint for the Army to piggyback. While I am a 1911 fanboy I am not saying that is necessarily the best choice but it will be the most cost effective choice and not a bad one. The military lives in a joint world now and the pressure is for standardization and commonality. The Marines put a marker down and that usually wins.
I could barely maintain my composure with this one. Couldn’t stop laughing.
“There’s a new semi-automatic handgun on the horizon for the Army that U.S. consumers may have access to almost immediately. When that happens, America’s emergency rooms better be prepared for the carnage that’s likely to follow.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/army-handgun-weapon-criminals-162100885.html
Little do they know the military is actually trying to catch up to the civilian firearms market.
this is the USG’s punishment against Beretta’s move. . . . this has nothing to do with stopping power or developing a new round.
Ehh the military seems to do this every couple years or so and never actually changes anything. The Marines have been trying to get away from the Beretta for a long time.
They’ve made the first steps… look up the M45.
WTF are you talking about?
wanting to get away from the Beretta?
Is that why they purchased M9A1s? /facepalm/ (im sick of marine corps rumor mills and BS being spread around by the M45A1)
May I suggest 9×23 Winchester. I like this cartridge, but it’s rare. Wouldn’t be rare anymore if it were military issue. And while I wouldn’t want anyone to have to rely on ball ammo from a handgun to stop a threat, if you must, you’d want a really powerful round and a magazine that can pack close to 20 of them.
Whatever is adopted has to be “usable” by the girl soldiers and the pansies. Entire reason Sam dropped the .45.
Complete and total nonsense.
“Pansies” Wow, I haven’t heard that term in over 20 years. Forgot what it means. Is that something similar to a Panzer?
its the people on the receiving end of the “panzing” ?
People love to discuss the 9mm vs 45acp. Having seen 100s of bullet wounds in a hospital I have never been able to tell the difference between the two.
The 45 makes a bigger hole!
In human flesh you cannot tell the difference
Meh, after all the horror stories of worn out M9s, I’d just get a brand new 92. If I wanted one.
FN FNX Tactical 45 gets my vote. Or a CZ P01 or SP01 variant of some sort, or P09 if they wanted to go cheap, but something tells me they want the metal frame. 19+1 is tough to argue with of 9mm.
I really don’t understand why a SIDEarm is attempting to get rifle fight stopping power, which no handgun calibers really give you at the moment. I can see the appeal of going to a 45 if you have to go to a bigger cartridge, but 40 and 357 sig make close to the same size holes as a 9mm and you give up capacity.
“It might be quite some time before the Army selects a winning design” Hahahaha, oh gosh, what an understatement, I’ve got $20 that says it takes like 7 years to write the contract and they adopt some craptastic handgun that makes everyone go “WTF?!”
Caliber wars are silly, and even sillier for military pistols.
Switching off of 9mm would completely ignore the huge stockpiles in place and logistical ease of using the same ammo that most of the world uses.
Yes, when using ball ammo 9mm isn’t great, but its a backup weapon. The only time it is ever used is if lots of other things have gone wrong. The other 99.99% of the time it is merely extra weight for someone to carry, and every pound makes a difference. You can simply carry more 9mm then .45 for the same weight, and are more likely to find some nearby if needed.
But if they change calibers think of all the cheap 9mm ball practice ammo that will hit the market.
I’ll second that! I just got a new 9.
I thought the the prevalence of soft body armor on the modern battlefield was the primary reason for moving away from 9mm (like the MP5). With that and the fact that the sidearm IS a backup weapon and therefore usually just additional weight in mind, I would probably select the FN Five-seven as the new issue sidearm. A 20+1 round standard capacity (with 30 round magazines available), less weight loaded then an unloaded M9, and the ability (with the proper ammunition) to defeat certain types of body armor that the 9mm round cannot it seems ideal for their purposes.
I wouldn’t go with the Five SeveN. Nothing against it per se, but there isn’t the ecosystem for it. It makes sense for the Secret Service because for them having to penetrate body armour with a handgun is a very likely scenario.
For the military, not so much. If you’re overrun and long guns didn’t save you against attackers with body armour you’re probably screwed anyway. It’s just not a primary usage case. Given that, you have all the negatives of the Five SeveN platform to contend with.
Exactly Paul, the military side arm is a back-up weapon… at least for frontline troops.
It is a back-up weapon for front line forces when primary weapons are no longer usable for whatever reason. Side arms are last resort in those circumstances most often involving CQC.
Side arms are also issued to support personnel in theater who do not carry a combat long gun.
Best of both worlds would ideally be a larger than 9mm NATO high capacity sidearm that is also operable by ‘pansies’. Ideal might be something such as .40 S&W or .357sig with decent stopping power and penetration, and a few more rounds in the Magazine than .45acp. But that might be too complicated for run of the mill procurement mindsets.
Personally, even though it’s not my favorite civilian use sidearm, for in theater I’m partial to the 1911; it’s hard to beat two World Wars and innumerable “police action” conflicts worth of proven and reliable.
Worked well for me.
If your ‘market’ is support personnel that don’t get much range or trigger time, then having more bullets make even more sense, since you can expect them to miss a lot.
Another thing people forget is the concept of suppressing fire. You may need to send a lot of rounds towards your target, but not with the intent of killing them. In that case I’d rather have double the amount of 9mm or a similar smaller round than 45’s.
Or… you know, have the guy with the M240 do the suppressing thing. Most people who get issued pistols have shiny stuff on their collars and can DO that.
Big Blue,
+1 on that. Most of the military “had to use my pistol” incidents I’ve heard, have involved hasty suppressing fire: one example was a Warrior driver who spotted someone coming out of an alley mouth with an RPG, and emptied his pistol in their direction (not easy to get even a L22 out of the hatch and into firing position, pistol’s more usual for those guys): probably didn’t get a hit because range was maybe forty yards, from a moving vehicle he was meant to be driving, but it made the RPG gunner duck for long enough, and provided sufficient target indication, that the top cover sentry and the gunner both got eyes and then weapons, onto him as the Warrior moved and the arcs opened… with a profoundly negative outcome for the RPG engagement.
The other example I heard directly was during a compound clearance operation: leading soldier came under fire inside the building, took hits in body armour (painful but not incapacitating) and rifle (out of action) – he drew his sidearm and put “maybe a dozen” rounds into the doorway he was being attacked from, as he backpedalled out of the line of fire (and a member of his fireteam moved up under that cover, to donate the hostile shooters a grenade).
Military pistol engagements tend to be fairly desperate with lots of rounds fired in haste (if you had time for deliberate fire why aren’t you using your primary weapon?): once being hit generates at least an “ouch”, a big magazine in a manageable grip size seems to matter a lot more than bigger bore.
The obvious choice is a 1911 platform, chambered for .50GI. Even the name is right.
454 Casull. Its the only way.
Better be a .45-70 government.
Come up another twenty thousands to 470 Nitro Express, just in case!
And put it on a NAA mini revolver frame, to keep the weight down.
Amen! The 9mm in FMJ is a very good perpetrator but lacks sheer stopping power. The .40 is better, however the .45 is at least a 55% one shot stopper; better by far than the other two. If JHPs were allowed then the values all double in these three calibers. But FMJ is the law in war…Personally, I like Glock, simple, always ready to fire, no cocked and locked carry that in the military could get the average GI’s foot shot off…
With JHP rounds 45 is a 110% one shot stopper? That’s pretty badass!
so would that mean 100% stop on the intended target and 10% chance to stop on a secondary target..or is it 110% on one target and they get gibbed? 🙂
LOL the hilarity!
do pray tell, where does this 55% come from?
I love 45 fanboys and their “facts”
Fn 5.7 just so the ammo drops in price with volume
Caliber wars are stupid. That is all.
Yes, but their fun to debate.
Why is any of this stuff hard?
Suitable military guns:
Sig 220 / 226 / 227,
Glock 17 / 22 / 19 / 23 / 34 / 35 / 21
Smith M&P
Springfield XD
1911 that runs reliably with JHPs
FN FNX
And potentially a bunch more.
If it can be a decent duty pistol, it can be a decent military pistol.
Using any decent police-grade 9mm / .40 / .45 JHP. Nobody with any wisdom uses handgun FMJs for self defense.
Done.
Of course, this replacement pistol “project” will employ dozens of bean counters and “operators” and cost millions of dollars.
Except we are limited by international law to FMJ. The policy will not be changed.
And I say screw that and use JHPs. I’d also upgrade 5.56 to 300 BLK, and eliminate the Gun Free Zone gun ban on US military bases. Would you rather fight with me or the currently military brass?
I would do those kinds of things too but it isn’t the Army brass that you have to argue with. It’s the DoS and DoD General Councel, and the Service JAGs that you must discuss this with. I am sure the Army brass would use JHPs for pistols and bonded hunting ammuntion in rifles if they could. Unforntunately both they and I live in the real world and not on the internet.
Except we are limited by international law to FMJ
No, we’re not.
+1 – The Hague ’99 was never signed by the US, IIRC. I suspect we do use FMJ mainly due to logistics interop with our allies that did sign it. I might be wrong, though.
Military does use hollow points, it’s just not the standard.
Intent behind ball is penetration (body armour). People are so used to us fighting asymmetric wars in Central Asia and the Middle East they forget there is an entire missionset that centers around organized armies with body armour
Anyone else notice the author’s bio? He teaches an undergraduate course in photography. What the heck gives him credentials to write a firearms piece and get published?
I certainly wont see one in a gun store by me in California.
Bet it’ll be .45
Marines already called dibs.
On that and the 1911 to shoot it. Marines also call Dibs if the USAF actually gets rid of the A-10 like they’ve been grumbling about.
10mm should get another chance, in a pistol like a Glock or Sig.
I’m with you on this – then when there are government contract overruns and cancellations, cheap 10mm will hit the market. Here I come, SGAmmo!
personal opinion: there was nothing wrong with the 1911, it went bang every time you pulled the trigger, it is about women being taken into the armed services, who were thought by our leader ship as not strong enough to handle a .45; Another story is politics as the Senator from the lucky state got big bucks for his or her state. tax coffers,
Basically the argument boils down too marksmanship, two in the head and one in the chest pretty much works with most Calibers! Back in the day a S&W model 39 in 9mm was considered the Cat’s Behind! I heard tell of a VC that took 5 nines to the throat and chest area, finally died when hit in the fore head at about a foot from the muzzle using that weapon! Would a .45 have put them down better remains unknown but big bullets make big holes
Not to ruin a hyper right wing political rant but the FNX-45 is supposed to be an example of what the military had in mind for their future pistol. .45 caliber (kills your rant about calibers that women like Rush Limbaugh could handle), threaded barrel (silencers to come with all pistols evidently), and a large capacity magazine.
Of course, it was also too expensive so back to the drawing board.
Also, once again not to harsh a hilariously loony conservative political rant but back in my day when we made bombs 9mm mil spec ammo was available much cheaper than .45. I don’t know if that’s true today or not but ammo cost is a serious component when you have to testify about life cycle costs of a proposed weapons system.
Couldn’t pass up a chance to attack Limbaugh? He is a lot more of a man than the president of this country.
IMO, the author’s biggest mistake (other than his entire worldview) is in his premise that the army’s switch to the Beretta popularized semi’s, when it was actually the switch by LEOs in the 80’s that led the way. Criminals have zero awareness of what the Army uses (how often have you seen armed soldiers patrolling your city?), but they notice what the Police have. I’ve seen Glock after Glock in real life and not one Beretta M9 outside of a gun shop.
And yet the army just put out another order for a quarter million dollars worth of m9s. After the move was announced, mind you. Make yourselves comfortable, this program isn’t going anywhere. http://kitup.military.com/2014/07/army-buys-more-m9-pistols.html
Umm, isn’t that only, like, 1000 pistols?
I hope it is .45. Its the only other semi auto handgun round that I like besides 9mm. If the military can’t use JHP ammo then .45 makes the most sense because it makes such a big hole.
Here’s a really stupid idea. Give every GI a thousand bucks and tell them to buy whatever side arm they wanted, and spend what’s left over on plenty of ammo, since their buddy probably is shooting a different caliber.
Why does the Chinese Marine? look so confused?
He’s wondering why the powerful US military issued a pistol older than him.
With the recent developments H&K could even get a US military contract. I’d bet cost would no longer be a problem with the strapped Germans.
Double stack 1911 in .45 ACP. Maybe 1/2 rail
I’m gonna go out on a limb and opine that anyone of any political stripe who seriously seeks out The Atlantic and/or Yahoo Finance for serious information on firearms is seriously on the wrong track.
Exactly. They need to go to a reputable source like the Washington Post or the NY Times. 🙂
Or Faux News. Lately the Wall Street Journal is also taking on an element of being fiction.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the HK45c made it into the mainstream. This is a sidearm we are talking about people. It isn’t going to be a 10mm or some other half breed high power special purpose cartridge. It is the government after all, they aren’t going to go and get something that doesn’t already exist in inventory. When you want penetration, you use a bigger weapon, not a more powerful handgun.
I’ll go out on a limb right here and now and make a prediction. As we all know, prediction is difficult, especially about the future.
But in this case, we have an abundance of evidence from which we can extrapolate the DOD’s behavior in this matter.
For how many years, how many calibers/cartridges and how many rifle/carbine designs have been proposed to replace the M-16/M-4? Seems I’ve been reading about some “research” or “proposed” or “limited contract run” to replace the M-16/M4 since the early 90’s. We’ve had the H&K proposals for caseless ammo, the OICW, 6.8 SPC, blah, blah, blah, blah. There’s blatherous projects even now about replacing the M-4. None of them will come to anything.
About the closest we’ve seen to a real upgrade to the M-16/M-4 is new ammo in the form of 77gr Sierra OTM pills on a hot load for short barrels. But that’s not widely available in the logistics chains.
So, from this, what can we project about the M-9 and the 9×19? Easy.
There will be no new pistol. You’ll see some tweeks to the M9. There will be no new caliber; it will be 9×19 NATO.
There’s going to be a lot of noise, debate, evaluation, fretting, counter-fretting, endless opinion pieces and bloviation issued forth from the four corners of the gun world… and it will all come to naught. The incompetence that is the bread-n-butter of the federal bureaucracy will, in the end, make a default choice of what we have now, because there is no danger of political repercussions from “doing the status quo.”
then explain how we got the M9 after… what…70 years of 1911? New Pistol, New caliber… stockpiles bla bla bla status quo bla bla bla… and here came this thing shooting 9mm.
Explain the M16, M240, M249, the M82 family of rifles… the good old M14, the M1 Garand… Hell, ’03 Springfields were good enough for your (great grand)father, they’re good enough for you!
Your argument is flawed. It makes valid and completely true points, but it predicts things which do not generally hold true. sure there’s ALWAYS some program to make a better Machine gun, rifle pistol, submachine gun or whatever. Sometimes even with government support, just in case it bears fruit. But when the top dogs of the branch go deliberately looking for a new flavor of BLAM to feed the guys we’re fighting, they often get SOMETHING, even if it’s a pistol with a habit of cracking slides and shooting rounds that wound instead of kill.
I’ll tell you how.
Colt couldn’t make them any more. Colt’s tooling and fixtures had deteriorated to such an extent by the 1970’s that they couldn’t make a new run of 1911A1’s at a competitive price for the military without spending a boatload of cash on new tooling. The last time Colt made 1911A1’s for the US military was, I think, 1945.
Young people today seem to have no idea just how long the logistic build-up from WWII lasted us. We made so much stuff for WWII, that parts, ammo, weapons, you name it from WWII were dirt-cheap in the surplus market clear into the 1980’s. It was only in the last 10 years that Garands started becoming really expensive to feed, as the seemingly inexhaustible supply of .30-06 ball ammo finally dried up. It took 50+ years, but it finally did dry up.
The 1911A1’s made in WWII, or shortly thereafter for the DOD, lasted a good long time. There several many makers of 1911A1’s in quantity – Colt, Remington Rand, Ithica, Union Switch. There were plenty of spare parts. They were easy to rebuild.
But by the 1970’s, many 1911A1’s in military service were pretty badly worn. We needed at least a refresh run of 1911A1’s to replace those worn out. Ah, but non-Colt manufacturing base of the 1911A1 was gone.
Colt, in their arrogance brought about by being the single source supplier for the M-16 (and variants) for the DOD, thought “Well, obviously, the Army is going to want a 1911, and we’re the only place to get a 1911, so we’ll just sit back and wait for the DOD to meet our terms…”
Since there wasn’t the plethora of 1911-making companies back then for competitive suppliers for a contract, the DOD, starting with the USAF started casting about for a new pistol platform, which came as a rude surprise to Colt. Further, there was political pressure from on high to standardize on a NATO round, the 9×19, which the Europeans positively love (as they would, since the European military forces rarely use a pistol for anything more than a fashion accessory for officers, and why would you want to carry a heavier pistol in .45 ACP rather than a stylish little number in 9×19 or .380?).
The rest, as they say, is history. The political forces at the highest levels don’t want to change away from 9×19 as a cartridge. Once the cartridge is in place, what will any new pistol design have over the Beretta 9x series of pistols? Better safety? Nope. More accurate? I doubt that would be an issue. Lower cost? Maybe. But Beretta isn’t run by the same stooges who ran Colt into the ground; Beretta knows their job is to keep making guns. Beretta might license production to someone else, but I foresee no radical developments in sidearms that are going to make a compelling case to switch off the M9.
As to the demise of the real battle rifles, I have one name for you to research: Robert Strange McNamara – and his “whiz kids.” That’s how we dispensed with the M-14 and converted to the M-16, as well as disbanded the US Armory system within the US Army.
Your mention of the 1911 and its production woes was also the reason for the M45A1’s recent adoption by the Marine Corps to replace existing M45 frames: the existing ones were dated back to WW2 in some instances and needed to outsource a wide variety of quality parts from different manufacturers (caspian, wilson, etc). Much complication. That and the MARSOC armorers simply couldn’t keep up with the maintenance requirements of these M45s that were long in the tooth.
My dad told me about the 1911s in the 1970s to early 80s big army: beat to shit, old as dirt. Cool as a vintage abercrombie and fitch fly rod, but for all intents and purposes, essentially obsolete. I miss old school 1911s too (such as that carbonia blue 1911 posted here a while ago. when i think that such things are fading into history, i die a little inside).
Haha! That’s what I told my brother and father when they both mentioned reading the article. My brother said, “but they’re really doing it this time!” I hope they update their platform, but at the end of the day, their findings (after blowing a fortune in testing and wasting everyone’s time) will merely conclude that they should buy more beretta’s in 9mm. No changes.
Yes, once again, you are correct and its nice seeing somebody’s head well grounded in reality.
Nothing will change, other than maybe a M9 PiP. Ideally, the military would develop a 9mm round that is improved from the M882, although, honestly, there really isn’t much incentive to do that either since handguns arent the military’s main weapon and they dont profoundly affect battles.
This is a repeating of history with the JCP trials and other such related nonsense, alongside being the pistol equivalent of ICC.
Please not the .40! That’s what I carry, and I don’t need it to become any more popular. Right now, it’s the easiest handgun cartridge to find around here owing to 9mm, .45, .357 and .38 being more popular. 🙂
The military owns over 200,000 M-9s
they just ordered 100,000 more
Is this because 100,000 in inventory are kaput?
Or is it SNAFU?
I would love for them to adopt a .357 SIG pistol, if only for the cheap surplus ammo.
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