Army wants a harder-hitting pistol

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Tirod said:
The Marines recently broke away and readopted the 1911, but don't take that as a blanket application. Marines don't carry it, even officers, under the rank of LTC. A field Marine officer who is being shot at carries a rifle, same as the Army. Even in MP units, if the mission is area defense, you don't trot out to a road crossing or set up a checkpoint with just M9's on your hip. We took our M16A2's, Mk 17's, etc and were armed better than the average Infantry squad. Pistols were for duty at the front gate stateside checking ID.
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Most Marine SNCO's and Officers are carrying M9's as we speak. The 1911 is also only carried by a few select units.
 
Post #93....

Olhasso is also a match shooter. ;)
Carrying or shooting a M&P and working on paying customers' Beretta 92/96s are different.

See www.Olhasso.com . He lists the Beretta parts & services.

Rusty
 
So why not a new cartridge that has similar characteristics to the 5.56 in FMJ guise, aka it will tumble and turn sideways in flesh? I'm not sure what the design would need to be to ensure that, but I'm thinking a high-speed round with relatively light weight where the projectile is unstable in a 'fluid' body, but stable and accurate in air. Like it or not, we have to abide by treaty conventions which dictate no HP ammo.

I agree with other posters that a SWC or FWC design may be in order if one adopts one of the current cartridges. Jim Cirillo used FWC's with the NYPD stakeout squad in his revolvers to good effect in terms of stopping power.
 
tnxdshooter said:
Why not go back to the tried and true battle proven 1911? They don't call the .45 ACP the "flying ash tray" for nothing.
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I'm with you. Even if the 1911 were in 9mm, it's a design that's proven itself over 113 years. I still prefer .38 Super, but .45 ACP or a really hot 9MM JHP would do just fine.

There was an earlier post about the bullet design. It's about time that someone decided that a JHP round was all right.

The snipers who shoot a .30 caliber round, use a 168gr BTHP a lot. The bullet does expand, although not to the same degree as a full-HP design.

Quelle est la difference?
 
So why not a new cartridge that has similar characteristics to the 5.56 in FMJ guise, aka it will tumble and turn sideways in flesh? I'm not sure what the design would need to be to ensure that, but I'm thinking a high-speed round with relatively light weight where the projectile is unstable in a 'fluid' body, but stable and accurate in air. Like it or not, we have to abide by treaty conventions which dictate no HP ammo.
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We made one (or rather, the Belgians did). The FNH 5.7x28 does exactly these things, in addition to penetrating armor and having high space-efficiency. The problem is, H&K gnashed and wept until the German government exercised its veto power in NATO, preventing the then-pending adoption of 5.7x28 as a standard NATO ammunition.

TCB
 
The problem is, H&K gnashed and wept until the German government exercised its veto power in NATO
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Why exactly? Did H&K have a competing cartridge?
 
HighRoadRover said:
Okay, a couple of quick thoughts.

Obviously, the industry is aware of this coming competition, which apparently will require a striker-fired design: Thus new Sig's P320 and HK's new VP joining FN's relatively new FNS, etc., and joining S&W's M&P and of course Glock's 4th Gen family of G-pistols. Most or all of these designs have the option of safeties, provisions for lanyards, etc., which apparently will be required.

The Army should settle on a magazine design, and tell interested companies to incorporate it in their design. (The mag would be proprietary and belong to the US Govt., and no company could produce a variant for the civilian market with that magazine design). Then buy any company's product if 1) their pistol meets the reliability test and 2) is made in the USA. The only thing the troops need interoperability for is the mags. Different models could be assigned en group to different units, to enable armorers to focus on individual models -- but with a pistol, the best thing to do with one that doesn't work is evac it to depot-level maintenance and issue a substitute, rather than have some kid in the arms room try to tinker with it.

Another idea: what the Army really wants is something other Army's have, which is a SMG. I think the AR design could yield a "short barreled rifle" or a SMG-style design that would be almost as easy to use as a pistol, and I think it would be ideal for soldiers who need a sidearm for protection while performing another task in or near the battlefield. Operators of crew served weapons, drivers, EOD techs, etc., could carry this SBR or SMG slung on their side. The M4 is halfway there, but there are even shorter/more compact designs available. The Sig MPX is awfully intriguing.

There may still be a need for pistols as a backup weapon. 9mm is adequate (and easier to train with, easier on pistol frames, and even less expensive) if we can move to a fairly zippy JHP round (going to one of the 9mm rounds that Police are finding so effective). The argument against "dum-dum" bullets from the 1900's is not germane; the rationale for abandoning the old treaty is that the enemy now often wears body armor and that combat often takes place in urban areas, where innocent civilians can be hurt by over-penetrating FMJ bullets. We can walk away from the rule about only using ball ammo if we want to, that simply, as long as we have a good reason.

Certain units in Iraq/Afghanistan involved in clearing targets went to .40 over their long-preferred .45 because of the increased magazine capacity (.45 is still viable for some types of ops where prolonged exchanges are not expected, e.g., where they are not clearing large or successive buildings). 9mm was apparently not considered because 9mm ball is pretty useless (it certainly can kill people but they have to be shot a lot of times or in critical areas - otherwise, they can be mortally wounded but it takes time for them to die, and they can kill you back in the meantime). Interestingly, MPs in the combat zone apparently carry law-enforcement grade JHP ammo...

Summary: A proprietary US pistol magazine; multiple types pistols as long as they meet the requirement for design and reliability; a SMG or SBR for at least some of the folks currently armed with pistols.
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Oh where do I begin...

At the very least, lanyard options on military sensitive items is a must. Anything that can be lost that a soldier can be fined to replace needs to have a way of "dummy cording" the item. Gone are the days where a soldier can say "I lost it" and not expect to see a bill to replace something. Safeties, in manual and internal forms, are a maybe. Hopefully the military will have an open competition with only a handful of features the weapon "must have" in order to be accepted.

Proprietary magazines will probably not be accepted. Purely because of budget. When the M9 was accepted, Beretta already had the tooling in place to make the magazines. They just had to start making more of them to meet the military customer. Redesigning the wheel, or in this case the magazine, will cost more. And as Murphy's laws of combat state "your weapon is made by the lowest bidder." Simplicity beats out modular when it comes to logistics. If everyone is using the same model, it is easier to order replacement parts.

The SMG is pretty dead in modern military fighting. Soldiers have to IDENTIFY targets and destroy or neutralize them with precision. The SMG doesn't. Iraq was the closest we came recently to "needing" a modern SMG, but it wasn't produced because the M4 can and has filled the role for urban ops. 3 round burst is a viable alternative when you can't clear a room with semi.

We can walk away from using FMJ and leave the Hague conventions, other countries have. But simply we won't. And forget about letting soldiers provide their own ammo to get around the organized rules of warfare, that never bodes well. The US military likes to take a moral higher road, even when using expanding ammunition will be more effective.

Certain units? Name any. I worked with all sorts of units in and outside the US military when I was overseas. The VAST majority carried M9 pistols. A few SOCOM units carried HK or SIG but still in 9mm. I didn't see any carry .40 or .45 or JHP ammo. Granted some units in the Marine Corps and Army (very few) have gone back to .45s. The most interesting firearm of note when I was in the Middle East was a Taurus 9mm used by a South African contractor.
 
The most interesting firearm of note when I was in the Middle East was a Taurus 9mm
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off topic...


Oddly enough I travel to the ME quite a bit for work (non-MIL) and I've ran a cross quite a few troops/police with S&W revolvers. Always scratched my head on that one.
 
Oddly enough I travel to the ME quite a bit for work (non-MIL) and I've ran a cross quite a few troops/police with S&W revolvers. Always scratched my head on that one.
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During the Viet Nam war, the Air Force issued .38 revolvers to aircrew. Army helicopter crews, not to be outdone, also got .38s.

I never understood the logic behind that.
 
robhof

I hear Wenger of Vitrinaux fame is entering the tryouts with the ultimate sidearm; knife spoon can opener and 10mm pistol all rolled up in one pocket size tool!:D:D:neener:
 
US Secret Service; wound ballistics.....

I saw a recent US Secret Service doc on TV that explained how the DHS agency went from MP5s to the FN P90s in 5.7mm :confused:. They've used the .357sig(P229R DAK) as a main sidearm since the mid 1990s.
The USSS picked the P90 system because the firepower(# of rounds), high vel(AP capable), excellent marksmanship & ease of service/cleaning. P90s are compact & portable too. They SMGs were featured in the later seasons of Stargate SG1.
Id think this panel will look at wound ballistics & forensics. Some media wags spouted out how deadly the M4/M16 was based on ER doctors & hospital reports. :rolleyes:
Some of these medical types said the 5.56mm was more deadly than a 12ga 00 buck. :confused:

As for the "personal weapon" format, the US armed forces tried it in the late 1980s/early 1990s with the HK PDW & the MP5K 9x19mm . The guns never really got enough T&E then the whole concept was cut.
A system could help the modern service member in combat but like the HK Model 23 mark 0 .45acp, the end product could be bulky, complex & hard to carry. :mad:

This why I think a simple .40Super type round in a polymer frame/P229R size firearm could do well. The SIG P250 modular style could work if the US armed forces would go for it.

Rusty
 
I don't see anything changing but some money will be wasted. I haven't seen .45 GAP mentioned. But it has its appeal. The military has the clout to get the ammo mass produced and as much as we may prefer .45 ACP that will not work in a world where they are going to want high capacity and women to be able to shoot it easily. .45 GAP seems a pretty good option to me.
 
I have never been in the military, so I'm not the one to ask what the troops need. I have been handling firearms for over 50 years though. I have a Colt Gold Cup, a Smith 1911 PD and a 92FS. I sent my Beretta back to the factory and had it tricked out. Trigger, hammer, and mag release replaced. Along with a crowned muzzle. I shoot better with my Beretta than my Colt. Judging by it's track record though, the 1911 appears to be a better combat weapon. I thinks it's a better design. From my perspective, shot placement is what it's all about......
 
Somehow or other we seem to have fallen into the fallacy that a gun that will NOT do the job when fired by a man WILL do the job if fired by a woman
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Who has? Which gun is that? Not sure I follow.
 
We made one (or rather, the Belgians did). The FNH 5.7x28 does exactly these things, in addition to penetrating armor and having high space-efficiency. The problem is, H&K gnashed and wept until the German government exercised its veto power in NATO, preventing the then-pending adoption of 5.7x28 as a standard NATO ammunition.
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Why exactly? Did H&K have a competing cartridge?
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You're kidding, right? The 4.6x30mm round for that ridiculously expensive and unobtainable MP7 PDW. The one that allegedly costs like 6 grand for H&K to produce (which it sells for like half that, apparently :rolleyes:), and whose round is so over-pressured and inefficient it could not be feasibly be put into a pistol sidearm per the NATO requirements ;). It is just barely under 5.7x28 in performance across all weights as best I can tell (the greater bottle neck taper makes it a bit less efficient, with a lightweight 5.7mm round getting a sabot-like boost over a narrower bullet of equal weight), but the 4.6 makes up for it by using bullets made of hardened steel & titanium, rather than a fancy, over-engineered aluminum penetrator (makes me wonder how effect the H&K round is in tissue, though). Hard to tell if that's simply due to the MP7 having such a comically short barrel for a rifle, though (because the two rounds are specific to a single platform more or less, I assume velocity specs are published for the P90 and MP7, respectively having 10" and 7" barrels)

TCB
 
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If you ask me, I think this pistol nonsense is just the latest example of a disturbing and counterproductive behavior coming out of the military procurement folks on all fronts;
-In the name of "simplicity," they devise some ginormous winner-take-all, all-or-nothing, high stakes contract competition that will decide the dominant player in the field for at least the foreseeable future
-The scope of the project being so enormous, the requirements for it are made extremely ambitious, often requiring technologies that don't even exist, yet
-The stakes are so high for the competitors, that loss for any of them is a near-existential consequence; if they don't go bankrupt from the lack of sales, the winner will be posed to dominate or buy them outright.
-The competitors are so intent on not losing, that the only solution is for them all to tear down and lobby against whoever happens to be the perceived front runner (see Game Theory and the last Republican presidential nomination :rolleyes:)
-Close government oversight prevents the competitors from aligning against the frontrunner (well, it's supposed to, and in most cases appears to work well enough to keep winners from being decided by a cartel)
-Because the lawsuits and accusations will never cease, the government eventually relents and gives everyone a piece of the pie by allowing them all to subcontract for the nominal 'winner,' thus ensuring collusion (again, supposed to be prevent by laws and oversight, but having all major players working for each other simultaneously sounds like something that should be illegal on its face in the first place, regardless how many pots they all have their fingers in)

If the .mil would simply allow lower level units to adopt what they want, on some sort of budget-constrained basis, new products could be introduced on limited 'pilot' scales as they become available, and internal 'market type' forces within the military would be more likely to promote the most successful products within the organization. Think about it; despite our modern data-mining super computers and smart warfare concepts, we're incapable of managing weapons logistics more complicated than what we had in the 60's? :scrutiny: :confused: Isn't this kinda what we've been doing with our special forces all along, and mostly with great success?

TCB
 
Long slide Glock, 6" barrel (G35). Better performance from the same calibers, longer sight radius, etc.

Better Solid point ammo. Similar to hunting ammo. Penetration is still more important than expansion.



2zgu6gz.jpg
 
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Warsaw Pact?....

Didn't the Russians or Warsaw Pact develop a SMG/PDW round in the 1980s that could punch thru body armor?
I heard these compact machine pistols are popular with crime syndicates & a few gangs in Europe/eastern block nations.

I agree the whole HK PDW plan was a mess from the start.
It's a common engineering principle that something designed to do many tasks won't do anything well. :rolleyes:

I think it's strange too that so many bring up shot placement(marksmanship) as paramount but in the post FBI shoot-out era(late 1980s/early 1990s) everyone wanted; power power power. :uhoh:

"experts" railed about how a handgun round needed to punch thru a arm or barrier & drive deep enough into a torso or chest to cause a deep wound channel & faster result(end of threat).

In my view, a new cartridge like a .400Corbon, .41AE, .40Super, etc could do that + feed well, be accurate & not wear out pistols(parts).

Rusty
 
Penetration is still more important than expansion.
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I think it's strange too that so many bring up shot placement(marksmanship) as paramount but in the post FBI shoot-out era(late 1980s/early 1990s) everyone wanted; power power power.

"experts" railed about how a handgun round needed to punch thru a arm or barrier & drive deep enough into a torso or chest to cause a deep wound channel & faster result(end of threat).
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There is a definite balance that needs to be found between power/penetration and shot placement. In the military's case, shot placement is VERY important because the 9mm FMJ already has enough power to reach vital organs, but no expansion to cause massive bleeding compared to JHP. Even though JHPs cause more internal damage, shot placement is still key because a determined enemy won't bleed out quick enough if vital organs aren't hit.

I can certainly see how the shift to "power" came in the aftermath of the FBI Miami shootout. Snub-nose revolvers vs. Mini 14s is not a fair match. Perhaps that shootout was the start of the ingenuity that brought us the better projectiles we have today, but in terms of a shooter needing to do HIS part, nothing really changed.
 
Most Marine SNCO's and Officers are carrying M9's as we speak. The 1911 is also only carried by a few select units.
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Don't disagree, and taking it at face value, exactly when and where does that happen? I'm looking for an idea of what the gun is meant to do, and how much of a lethal confrontation is expected.

On a daily basis, the average soldier doesn't carry his weapon at all. Aside from an MP stateside, it only happens in training. Lethal force is tightly controlled in the military. So carrying a weapon of any kind has rules of when and where. Usually overseas in a specific geographical area.

If SNCO's and Officers in the Marine Corp are carrying M9's, I suspect it's not on patrol in the foot hills, working a convoy, or search house to house. It's a PDW for the light intensity conflict situation - basically, you were supposed to be safe, but terrorists have now screwed that up. So, where it was ok, now it's not, carry a pistol.

Very much the same reasoning many carry concealed in civilian life, and cops do all the time. It's something that will be helpful, but it's not all out combat, so the M4 isn't in hand. (Unless you are having lunch at a Chipotle in Texas.)

The use of a pistol by military in those circumstances has escalated, and I understand a lot are carried on R&R overseas. For good reasons. Same reasons I carried mine last week on a short excursion out of town for our 40th anniversary.

So, in regards to the nature of a pistol and it's much higher use as a PDW among the service by the other 90% of the force - support - does it influence the nature and design?

I would think it highly probable, and it goes along with all the reasoning for the M9's features, too. Gets back to multiple safeties and making sure it won't be negligently discharged.

And that goes to why are Air Force and Navy unit's being issued Glocks with a single Safe action trigger for carry? Is this a demonstration the technology works, and that airmen and sailors can carry safely without redundant safety mechanisms?

I guess we won't now more about that until the 29th when some requirements are discussed. And I certainly agree with the assessment that these programs seem to be set up for a lot of public scrutiny, but the results are neither predictable nor guaranteed.
 
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"The U.S. Army is moving forward to replace the Cold War-era M9 9mm pistol with a more powerful handgun that also meets the needs of the other services."

Whoop-dee-doo.

This is tripe, coming from an organization which KNOWS that the sidearm is nothing more than an underpowered sidekick in the first place.
 
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