Posted on 09/03/2011 12:42:43 PM PDT by smokingfrog
“The M9 is at the end of its lifecycle,” declared Maj. Art Thomas [not shown], small arms branch chief at the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, GA. “It is an old weapon.” Pig pile on Beretta! True story: armytimes.com comes not to praise the Beretta M9. They come to well and truly bury the Maryland-made 9mm handguns. Here’s the bullet point version of why our men in uniform need to ditch the b*tch for something better . . .
• The[M9's] slide-mounted safety. When solders rack the slide to alleviate a jam or stovepipe in the M9, they often inadvertently engage the safety — and won’t realize this until they reacquire and squeeze the trigger.
• The open-slide design, which allow contaminants and dirt into the system.
• The lack of a modular grip, integrated rail and night-sight capabilities.
• The inability to suppress.
• Limited service life — replacement should have a service life of at least 25,000 rounds.
That last one really sticks in the Army’s craw. “Service life is a key issue,” Daryl Easlick told the times. The project officer for close effects (“How was work today honey?”) reveals that the M9 is only required to fire 5,000 rounds. “We are looking for a threshold capability in the magnitude of five times better than that.”
But wait M9 fans! There’s less!
(Excerpt) Read more at thetruthaboutguns.com ...
Time to return to the 1911.
I have no idea where that 5000 round figure came from but recall reading about the original tests which resulted in the M1911 being selected.
John Browning personally supervised the building and assembly of the pistols submitted to the Army testing board.
The Colt blew away all the competition, firing 5000 rounds without a single malfunction which had never happened before. Interesting that they used the 5000 round limit back then.
As I recall, the Glock was not allowed in those tests. I think it was because it lacked a manual safety. I always thought that was a political decision.
Concur. I’ve been looking to buy a handgun for my soon to be wife for when I’m overseas, and we have been renting different guns at the local indoor range to see what she can handle.
She’s a 5 foot 2 inch Asian, and she can handle a .45 just fine. I seriously doubt that PC issues with females had anything to do with the M9 decision.
I had an early Glock 17 and a 17L. Both of them jammed quite a bit and mine were not the only ones.
It was eventually traced to a series of bad magazines. You could identify them because you could see brass on the feed lips. Maybe it was the ones in which you could not see brass, I have actually forgotten.
They fixed the problem and I suspect Glocks are now as reliable as any.
Ask a few helicopter pilots or Special Forces what they think of the M9 boat anchor.
They’re even reliable with Korea made mags in them. I have a Gen 3 Glock 22 which never jams and I put a 9mm barrel and Glock 17 mags in it when I feel like it for range time. Perhaps the key to the Korean mag reliability is that they’re not ‘drop free’ so they fit nice and snug in the mag well for consistent feeds. Seems to be why they work so well in my Kel Tec Sub 2000 models.
The M9 felt like a VCR tape in my hands.
I refused to attempt to qualify with it back in ‘99.
It did not inspire confidence while I was holding it.
Though I did find a Kimber .45 that DID inspire confidence while I was holding it.
The brass won’t go to ‘old’ tech though.
Nothing could be finer...
My wife is 5”1” and prefers that calibre: I have never seen her miss.
Automatic pistols have been around so long that just about any of them from a reliable manufacturer with good mags are extremely reliable.
I personally think the double column mags are more reliable than the older single stack, especially with the 9mm which has a fair amount of taper from base to mouth. This taper makes it feed into the barrel reliably but also makes it not fit mags as well. I have noticed that the double column mags such as Browning Hi-Power, Beretta, Sig, Glock etc. all position the top cartridge more securely than the single column ones such as the Luger, P-38, S&W Model 39 etc.
It is actually getting unusual to find a modern high capacity pistol which does not feed, fire, extract, and eject perfectly.
My choice is the M&P .45
1911 style double stack 9x23
9x23 has ballistics very close to a .357 though it is not common round.
Bingo! Most chicks in uniform can barely handle the 9MM. God help us all if they are required to accurately fire and handle .357 or .45 in combat.
I think it was because it was a foreign made gun. Beretta had a US factory.
http://www.berettadefence.com/index.aspx?m=53&did=144
Having put nearly 1000 rounds through my Taurus OSS DS in .45 ACP, I will admit it is the pistol I would trust my life to. I have a 40S&W version which is proving to be just as reliable. The mags make all the difference when running hollow points through the weapons.
Nail head, meet hammer.
100% dead-on correct.
There were eight entrants, only three of whom had enough developmental time behind them to be serious contenders—Beretta, SIG/Sauer and the S&W 469. The others, the Steyr GB, FN High Power DA, Colt, H&K, and Walther, never had a realistic chance. Bill Ruger recognized early on (probably from his WWII experience) that his gun—what became the P85, designed principally by Roy Melcher— was not yet ready, and decided not to waste the money or suffer the adverse publicity that would ensue from a poor showing, and did not enter. Ruger concentrated instead on preparing his gun for commercial introduction without distraction, which proved a very wise decision. Gaston Glock was still struggling to get started in Austria, and his innovative design probably could not have satisfied the specs anyway. Star, which had been stung by its treatment in the earlier Eglin trials, kept its distance but unofficially, to an extent still unclear, had some arrangement with Colt; indeed, the Colt entry bore a remarkable resemblance to the Star M28, which in turn borrowed heavily from the Czech CZ75.
In the end, only Beretta, which had a proven gun and its own on-shore U.S. manufacturing facility up and running, was able to fully satisfy the Army. SIG came close, and indeed thought they had it in the bag through a strategic alliance with Maremont, who already supplied M2 and M60 machine guns to DoD. But last minute lobbying by the Italian government, which called in many diplomatic chits to apply pressure, coupled with an episode at the Pentagon of insufferable arrogance on the part of the Swiss who owned J.P. Sauer, produced a victory for Beretta.
http://www.waltherforums.com/forum/p88/6308-p88-failure-pass-drop-test.html
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