M&P : Why not a winner?

Their criteria are usually available online. Someone makes the decision of who to go with, and Sig made a P320 for around $207 per. When street price is over $500, that's a pretty smoking deal even with volume discount considered. They just fulfilled the requirements for the best price, I'm guessing.

I've never heard any glaring issues with the M&P platform.

They wanted a modular pistol which neither Glock nor MP are

As was already mentioned, I would expect that price had a lot to do with it. The p320 also seemed to match the requirements more than any other pistol as well. Those two things sound like it was a pretty easy choice.

its a terrible pistol. just like the sig p226, hk p7m13, s&w459a, etc were all terrible pistols compared to the beretta 92 in the last pick of the army winner.

its all politics and money...like most things in life......not really best pistol.

The thing that is most appealing about the 320s is that if a frame gets beaten up, scratched, or severely damaged - no biggy. Just chuck it and buy another one. It's a clever a design, and the versatility is excellent.

Personally, I don't care for the 320s, or many striker fired guns, but the M&P 2.0 is one I do like a lot, in fact I'm picking one up tomorrow.

There was probably some backroom dealing going on, as there usually is. But according to the RFP the gun had to be highly modular, which the S&W and Glock are not. By all accounts the Sig is a very good gun, I expect it will serve well.

mshootnit said:

So what you are telling me is if we take A MP 2.0 9mm and run four mags through it dump style, theow it on the ground, pick it up, field strip, reassemble, and then repeat this starting with four mag dumps, letting the barrel cool, and keep doing this over and over and over,

that the MP2.0 will hang right in there with the 320 and the glock?

I have no hidden agenda Im just askin how good is the pistol.

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I don't have any significant experience with the P320, but as an owner of both an M&P and a Glock - I don't notice the M&P to be any less reliable, and I personally shoot the M&P a lot better. Granted, that's probably more due to familiarity (I've got only about 1,000 rounds through the Glock compared to around 12,000 through the M&P), but to me the M&P does just handle and shoot better.

I own a P320 and it's a good gun. I like it better than the Glock G19. I have not shot any if the 9mm M&P pistols so I can't compare them.

My only problem is, the Army it trading in one 9mm pistol for another. What good?

mshootnit said:

Why do they consider the M&P to be not as good as the Sig or Glock?

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I don’t think the military choosing the Sig lessens the quality of an M&P or Glock at all. They just thought the Sig was the best for them. I think the Glock is best for me. Maybe you think the M&P is best for you.
Just saying.
We aren’t fielding lots and lots of pistols like they are. At least I’m not.

gqllc007 said:

They wanted a modular pistol which neither Glock nor MP are

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There is your answer. The only pistol submitted that meets the requirements for a MODULAR Combat Pistol was the Sig 320. In this aspect alone the competition was over before it started.

There is no requirement to buy what the military chooses. Get an M&P if you want one. The ones I've shot in .22, 9mm and .45ACP were all good guns. The Army has many criteria it had to satisfy; cost and modularity are just two. I am a 1911 fan, but I believe the P320 is the best choice for the Army at this time.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that the 'winner' of an Army (or FBI, or Border Patrol, or whoever) trial isn't necessarily a 'better' weapon; it's simply the best combination of traits specified in the RFP.

As a hypothetical example, I could see the Secret Service looking for a weapon system that could be configured as a handgun, a PDW and a PCC, since they use all those weapons. In fact, it might make a lot of sense for them to do so...hmmm....

Anyway, when they finally selected the winner of that trial, it wouldn't necessarily be the best pistol, best PDW, or best PPC available; it would just be the one that matched the way they wrote the specs most closely. It almost certainly WOULDN'T be the best handgun for a citizen, since the compromises required to meet those requirements would probably cost it a great deal of functionality in any one of the configurations.

Larry

I feel that the Army has started to think of a sidearm as an afterthought. "We got our rifles, we got our machine guns, we got our PPE... OH YEAH! A pistol too I guess." We always joked that if if came down to it you could at least throw your M9 and that would do some damage.

jdh said:

There is your answer. The only pistol submitted that meets the requirements for a MODULAR Combat Pistol was the Sig 320. In this aspect alone the competition was over before it started.

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A friend of mine that owned a gun shop was telling me about a bid he had submitted to a local police department in response to a request for purchase of shotguns. He said the specifications for the shotgun matched only one shotgun, a Remington riot style shotgun, the model number I don't recall. His bid was for another brand shotgun which came very close to the bid specifications but he didn't get the contract. He was told by a friend in the police department that the chief wanted Remington and used the factory specifications published by Remington in the request for bid. I have no idea how many pistols are considered modular but it makes you wonder if someone wanted Sig and only Sig.

George Dickel said:

A friend of mine that owned a gun shop was telling me about a bid he had submitted to a local police department in response to a request for purchase of shotguns. He said the specifications for the shotgun matched only one shotgun, a Remington riot style shotgun, the model number I don't recall. His bid was for another brand shotgun which came very close to the bid specifications but he didn't get the contract. He was told by a friend in the police department that the chief wanted Remington and used the factory specifications published by Remington in the request for bid. I have no idea how many pistols are considered modular but it makes you wonder if someone wanted Sig and only Sig.

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I work for the fed govt and can tell you that while this is not supposed to happen, it's not rare. In a govt (any level) request for proposals,you are using public $ so they make you need to run a fair and open competition . You also only get the funding once so you need to get it right the first time. However, there are companies out there that will gladly take your $ and leave you stunned with the miserable product/services on the contract they beat out a reputable vendor on. Once you get stung once or twice with a low bid to deliver an inferior product you (as the one writing the contract) learn to write your requirement specs as tight as you can (and still get past the legal department).
In defense of the chief he may have been considering that he may need to keep these guns for a decade or more before he gets upgrade $ again. He knows reliability will be what he needs and warranty service, parts, aftermarket accessories, vehicle mounts, etc will be plentiful. Where as if he got say RIA M5's (which are still an excellent shotgun), he may struggle with these logistics issues down the road.

Then again, maybe he just likes Remington

To expand on the low contract bidder: We had to bid the demolition of our old high school destroyed by an EF5. Low bidder was a less than reputable contractor from back east who's reputation proved reliable - nothing but trouble and it delayed new construction for months. The building had a basement and asbestos but for some reason they "failed" to take it into consideration and they sued for more money.

This all goes back to the thieves who were pocketing the money on contracts to supply beef for Indians forced to live on reservations in the desert with no means of farming or keeping animals. They "paid" for prime beef and then bought diseased animals barely on the hoof to deliver. The US looks like a deep pockets victim and the scammers are lined up to fleece YOU and ME.

There is also the service requirements - take the M4 quad rail, for example, It adds hundreds to the contract price of an M4, has four feet of rail on it, and no soldier ever can use it all up and still carry the gun effectively in combat. Nobody is suggesting he should, either. That rail is an institutional compromise to mount a wide variety of SOPMOD equipment unique to that unit, it's TOE and the MOS of the soldiers in that unit. Unlike the M203 which forced a questionable compromise in finished barrel diameter for over 40 years to mount it, the services got it right and stated their need in the spec for rails to do that job across all the units. And we got exactly that. No, it's not the best thing for you or me, it's a cheese grater on your hands, makes the weapon nose heavy, and It's kinda ugly, too. Using it, the troops keep it as bare as they can for a lighter weight and wear gloves even in the summer to protect their hands.

Things in specifications for military use might actually be useless for us. Goes to the modular requirement - we will see no benefit at all buying and using one gun. The service will see a big benefit swapping out the grip unit if it's damaged - instead of turning in a serial number tracked item to higher level repair. Meaning the armorer could request a new grip and change it out, vs deadlining the gun for weeks and shipping it off. Done right - and we are speculating on that - the repair will be cheaper and faster at the unit level. It's a matter of simply disassembling the weapon, pulling out the integral trigger unit assembly, and dropping it into another grip. No punches, hammers, spring orientations, lost parts, etc. It means it's unit repairable - and if the unit needs a different sized grip, that can be done too.

Big picture you and I will benefit from that, too, when you decide to assemble one to your specific wants. It will take about an hour even with a bare slide, and be up and running. A 1911? Days fitting the hammer and sear, among other things. Glocks aren't much better, and no drop in trigger units, it's all pins and spring assembly like it or not. P320's offer the next step up in service and repair for a fleet numbering in hundreds of thousands, for you and me it's versatility and a wider variety of options.

Handguns with integral pins holding trigger parts have just been made obsolete. It's the kind of thing that happened with computers, the 386 made the 286 obsolete. Both worked side by side for a few years in offices, Glocks will still be on the street for quite a while. But the next design parameter is now out there and you should expect to see a lot of drop in trigger unit guns in future offerings. It's not only simpler for the fleet users, and for us, it's easier to make in a factory, too.

Ironically, Glock missed the party in 1984 when we choose the M9, and now, with the P320, they are officially relegated to the "old school" of designs no longer considered current. Since the MP is just a slave to the same thinking - pin the parts in the integral frame - there's no question why. We just stepped forward and we aren't looking back.

I am just going to say it. I can't imagine that silly trigger mechanism that M&P uses (the two-piece, articulated trigger instead of the flipper thing everybody else uses) holding up. I had one that broke on me and it had to be replaced.

Actually, it holds up quite well. We've had hundreds of M&Ps in service -- many in hard-use -- since '08 and haven't had any issues with the trigger breaking.

Tirod, great post.

HoosierQ said:

I am just going to say it. I can't imagine that silly trigger mechanism that M&P uses (the two-piece, articulated trigger instead of the flipper thing everybody else uses) holding up.

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See FN FNS trigger https://fnamerica.com/products/pistols/fns-9/

Our local city PD tested various pistols for over 2 years. They had used Smith 5906's that were close to 30 years old and the Chief commented that he would never allow his officers to carry Glocks. They ordered samples of the M&P, but they didn't make it through the testing. Lots of failures and they eventually gave up on them.

By this time the 5906 was out of production, but Smith & Wesson agreed to a special run with a minimum number to be purchased. It was going to cost about 3X as much as the M&P and no way it was in the budget. The chief drug his feet for over a year looking at other options and finally consented to giving Glocks a try. They met all requirements and were adopted.

I don't know exactly what happened during the military trials, but Ruger and Smith dropped out early If the M&P couldn't make the cut for our local PD they probably didn't stand a chance with the military. Glock never really had a chance because it didn't meet the criteria. I've never shot one of the 320's but by all accounts it seems like a good choice.

I'm somewhat dubious of those that comment on a subject such as this with out actual hands on experience with the subject as in S&W MP series pistols. For myself I'm limited to a sample of two. A MP9 and MP9C both have been with out problem, fired extensively over a period of years and with that said employed as my EDC weapons of choice. Also of note the Ruger American Pistol AKA RAP9. Over the past twelve months multiple thousands of rounds fired with out problem, thou I can only speak to a sample of one.

I'm gonna throw this out there. In the end it came down to Sig, Beretta, and Glock. S&W was dropped from the competition a few months or so prior.