By Mark Oliva, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Monday, August 5, 2002
Soldiers who fought in combat in Afghanistan are saying they want a better pistol. The one they have now, they say, isn’t doing the job.
An unclassified U.S. Army “Lessons Learned” report indicates some soldiers were dissatisfied with the performance of the M-9 9 mm Beretta pistol, the Army’s standard-issue sidearm — the same one used by soldiers during operations Anaconda and Mountain Lion in Afghanistan.
Nine soldiers completed surveys for the M-9 pistol. Only one reported firing his pistol in combat “to engage targets of opportunity at 15 me-ters.” No combat malfunctions were reported.
However, just 63 percent of soldiers surveyed said they felt confident with the M-9 and trusted its reliability. That compared with almost 90 percent who felt the same way about their M-4 rifles, even though they share similar complaints about lack of knock-down power.
Some soldiers criticized the pistol’s effectiveness. One said the 9 mm rounds were “inaccurate and not powerful enough.” Three soldiers indicated they wanted the Army to field a more powerful round.
Veterans who’ve used this gun have complained to Washington. Retired Col. David Hackworth, an author and vocal critic of military policy, wrote an open letter to Congress in July calling for more reliable weapons to be issued to the military.
“We went into Vietnam with a bad weapon, the M-16 rifle, which was responsible for killing thousands of our soldiers,” he wrote. “What the M-16 was to Vietnam, the Beretta is to Afghanistan. And a soldier with no confidence in his weapon isn’t the most motivated fighter.”
Hackworth said one Afghanistan veteran wrote him that, “I had to pump four rounds into an al-Qaeda who was coming at me before he dropped."
“Our issue M-9 pistol (Beretta M92F) is proving itself unreliable,” another wrote to Hackworth. “They are constantly breaking. To make matters worse, the 9 mm hardball round we use is a joke. It is categorically ineffective as a fight stopper, even at close range."
Some soldiers are coping by packing heftier .45-caliber pistols, similar to those used by generations of soldiers and Marines since before World War II. Such .45s remain in the U.S. military inventory, but the origin of those used in Afghanistan — military issue or privately owned — remains unclear.
What’s not unclear to several of those using the older weapon is its value. “It saved my life,” one Army Ranger told Hackworth. “I hit a number of enemy 30-40 yards away who went down immediately from my .45 rounds. With a Beretta, I wouldn’t have made it because of the far-too-light 9 mm bullet, play in the action and its limited range.”
A Special Forces sergeant in Afghanistan wrote to Hackworth, “The large-caliber, slow-moving .45 bullet puts the bad guys on the ground. Lighter stuff like the Beretta’s 9 mm will, too — eventually — but on the battlefield you almost always have to double tap, and in close combat a gunfighter hasn’t the time or the ammo to lose firing two rounds.”
The Army says it’s too soon to rush to judgment against the pistol. No changes are in store to replace the M-9 for soldiers, but Army Lt. Col. Robert Carpenter, the project manager for the weapons reports, said more interviews are on the way to figure out just where the problems lie.
“We are taking the opportunity just this past week to review the raw information and re-interview the same units, to include leaders and all the way up through the logistics channels in order to identify any areas that may require support,” he said — but added, “I don’t know of any immediate changes to be implemented.”
Nor is everyone convinced the M-9 needs to go. It’s the bullet, they say, that’s no good.
For instance, in a famous civilian case in the States, an expert testified that the bullets had low lethality.
Ken Cooper, a New York state-certified law-enforcement pistol instructor, testified in the infamous Amadou Diallo shooting by New York City police in 1999. Cooper said police fired 19 9 mm full-metal-jacket bullets — the same ones used by the U.S. military — into Diallo. Of those, Cooper said, just three had any effect on his body; only one of those was fatal.
“Controlled expansion rounds would have had a much more pronounced effect and therefore effective result,” he said.
Cooper favors the M-9 as a durable weapon — but carries a .45-caliber handgun. He said there are trade-offs; no one bullet will meet every requirement.
“It is not the caliber or gun that is primary in effectiveness,” he said. “The larger the round, the more tearing of blood vessels and dumping of kinetic energy. The military is restricted to using, in general application, hardball rounds. Even the larger .45 in military ball does little more than the abused 9 mm. A better bullet design combined with a well-trained operator makes a lethal and effective weapons system.”
Hackworth needs a govenor on his mouth sometimes.