My bone of contention is that the US Army has for coming up on 15 years been seeking a sidearm replacement for the Beretta over the course of two hugely expensive programs for everyone involved, and they apparently ended up selecting a pistol they thought was bitchinest but discharges when dropped in a way they explicitly never tested. Oh what the hell, huh? There have only been two sidearm adoptions for the US military in 100 years and this is what happens after spending 15 years on these projects?
The first survey program called ‘Joint Combat Pistol’ produced several manufacturers’ pistols that have since proven hugely popular to law enforcement and civilians alike. I own one of them that was adopted by the US Navy as the Mk24 Mod 0. The second program reduced the number of projected purchases from well over a half million to only 65,000 units and it brought in all kinds of wacky designs from second and third rate manufacturers. Heckler and Koch saw the low unit sales and told the US Army to go spoon a goose after blowing zillions the first time around. Glock just submitted their Model 17 and told the Army to go get sample models their damn selves at the sporting goods store and call us if you need us. It was SIG who sold the Army on the neato features they needed to have and won the competition over CZ and Taurus and a ho-hum model from S&W.
So now we have a new 9mm pistol to replace the old 9mm pistol. But you can change the frame size on it so Bradley Manning can get a grip on it.
I am no SIG Sauer hater at all, but I’ve not been a big fan of recent SIG handguns for other reasons long before the SIG 320 was revealed. I do think one of its features will be adopted as standard by other manufacturers (the modular fire control assembly) and when they do they’ll end up being better than SIG’s design. I personally just think this drop failure will be the first of several serious issues because I’m dubious that SIG Sauer can keep up quality control in a sustained a military-sized production run. The old SIG Sauer company just ain’t the new SIG Sauer. Just my opinion. And the old proven Sig P22x guns would have never won any of the competitions. Crazy.
Just my opinion but I have to wonder if this adoption of the P320 will be as short-lived as the Navy Lee rifle or the 1898 Krag-Jorgensen.
The 226 did win the competition in 1983. The Beretta was selected due to magazine cost issues. BTW, the cheaper magazines the Army bought with the M9 had to be replaced with better ones because they did not work well in the desert. The P320/M17 will be fine and I suspect will be around longer than the M9. The M17 may be fine now as far as I know. The issue is with certain 320 pistols, not all P320s from what I have read. I do not know if it effects the M17 or not. It is probably prudent to wait and see before proclaiming failure on a massive scale
I just listened to yesterday’s LocknLoad radio show. Bill Grady spent an hour talking about this. He said that this issue was discovered during the military tests and an improved fire control assembly was developed that is used in all M17s and was subsequently rolled into civilian production pistols. He said that SIG will have an announcement next week on making a voluntary “upgrade” available for civilians owners with the older fire control group. I guess this is not an issue on the M17.