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I'm old enough to have been issued both an M1911A1 and an M9.
I remember reading, literally, decades of gnashing teeth about it too.
By the time we had the M9 competition we needed new pistols. I saw our arms room and it was only other units getting their new M9s that let us get the pick of the litter for our .45's.
New M1911A1's had two big problems in 1979 and 1984. They would be expensive and they weren't in NATO compliant 9x19mm.
By 2014 when we started noticing the M9's were getting worn out there was a real effort to get upgraded versions of the Berettas beyond the already issued M9A1.
Beretta put forth the M9A3 further updated to M9A4.
But but but modular...
Looking at a couple of places, it doesn't look like the M9A4 and M17 are all that different in price out there on the commercial market despite there being a commercial version of the M17 that's about half the price.
I just wish the military could internalize the nugatory value of a pistol and just pick one.
No special requirements. No features that will never be utilized (like modularity*).
There's almost nothing about a pistol that needs more than a large commercial-off-the-shelf purchase.
If you did that you could also buy American. I'd much rather see Ruger or Smith and Wesson get the money than a subsidiary of a foreign company.
Even more, I would like to see us buying designs again and then bidding out the manufacturing. Colt, after all, didn't make most of the M1911A1s. I completely understand why that won't fly, but it'd be nice.
All of this is coming to my mind because, with all the problems the P320 is having in LEO and government agencies, I can't help but wonder if the M19 is around the corner.
I would really think it would be great if S&W could get that contract and put the military back in the M&P name.
We could even stick with the M9A1. Beretta still makes them. The M9 is actually still in service.
* If they were REALLY embracing modularity there wouldn't even be an M18 designation. There'd just be the M17 and several barrel, slide and frame combinations for the armorer to make the unit's guns from.
FWIW, the M1911 that I was handed for qual in a Korean DMZ rice paddy range during Team Spirit had a barrel/barrel bushing interface so shot out the barrel literally clanged like a bell as I walked with it, holstered.
ReplyDeleteI didn't set any marksmanship records with the pistol equivalent of a blunderbus, with a barrel pointing vaguely downrange even with sights dead on the X ring.
There was nothing wrong with the 1911 per se, and the M9 was less appropriate to little hands than the 1911, and they could have easily just purchased thousands of brand new M1911A1 pistols, but where's the chance for graft in that, right?
They should still settle on a pistol, and "just pick one".
The technology was settled 114 years ago, so in whatever caliber and capacity, there needn't be any further updates except to replace wear and tear, until they're issuing one that's shooting laser beams.
But that's expecting the Ordnance Department not to suck and blow at the same time, something they've long since mastered, with only occasional brilliant weapons allowed to accidentally leak through their approval process.
We'd be better off if they just handed out ballots to the troops who carried them, and people at the pointy end voted on them once every fifty years, like they do every year for baseball's All-Star game.
Same era apparently... But Engineers seem to get the cast off equipment as we deployed with WWII stuff in the early 90's. We had the 1911's when we deployed and finally got the M9's after we got back. Of course the ones we got had been previously issued to MPs and so were "not new" and frankly with knowing the quirks on the older 1911's it was a more reliable weapon... Not sure "better" is the right word, if we were down to using pistols things were going quite poorly, but...
ReplyDeleteIn OSUT one of my fellow privates asked a Drill Sgt about how "deadly" a .45 was and he replied, "Son, if you're using your pistol in a fight you need to ask, 'what happened to your tank.'"
DeleteI kinda wish I had been issued a 1911 back in '73. But us missile techs were issued a squad of marines instead.
ReplyDeleteMarv