If you go into that same arms room you could likely find two M4's with the trigger springs incorrectly installed. It's still taking them down further than operator maintenance is allowed and the soldier who does that can charged with breaking it. He could spend a lot of weekends pulling grass out of the cracks in the sidewalk.
I see the problem here - NO, the soldier does NOT tear the gun down to it's component parts. That is upper level maintenance. NO, the soldier does NOT replace parts - first, there were no drop in parts on the 1911, they require gunsmith level fitting or it could be even more boogered up that it was broke.The 1911 never had a good set of blueprints, and when war production started up the other gunmakers were forced to reverse engineer existing guns to get a working set of blueprints. We like to think that Eli Whitney showed us we could make interchangeable parts for guns, but the reality is that it didn't happen until the M16 was put into production. The 1911 was a massive failure in getting drop in parts with Remington, Colt, Ithaca, Union Switch, and others to stick to the same dimensions and then the same production tolerances. Singer never got it right - they scrapped thousands of guns and just a few were ever accepted.
As time went by there were very specific faults found with the 1911 and John Moses Browning started the design for the gun later named the Browning Hi Power. Note carefully the following changes - double stack, magazine safety, no bushing. Subsequent to that the Germans came up with the Walther P38 and adding double action to the list of necessary features.
After WWII the Army came to the conclusion the 1911 was obsolete. Most of the WWI models were worn out. They started a new pistol trial in the late '40s with the requirments of 9mm, double action trigger, under 30 oz with a near 4" barrel. If that doesn't express their concern about the 1911 being antiquated, what does? After submittals, which included the Colt Commander (which didn't comply,) the T3 and T4, plus the S&W M39, they cancelled the effort as being too expensive. The Army was downsizing and there were 2.5 milllion 1911's in inventory. Those got rebuilt again, costing nearly as much as a new gun acquisition. They were sent to armorer's at depot level. No, the soldier didn't do it, no the company armorer didn't do it. It takes skilled gunsmiths to work on a 1911.
We finally caught up with the requirement for a new pistol in 1984 when the 1911 fleet was over at best 50 years old, double the life and expense put into it and still behind the times. The M9 finally approved was 9mm, had a lightweight alloy frame, double stack, double action, etc. Glock missed the bid window and didn't submit. It was simply a matter of timing. Those guns are now over 30 years old as a fleet, aging, worn down, and it's time to step up again.
The M17 Is modular - Glock is not. A Glock has a fixed molded chassis in the grip and damage to it requiring replacement means scrapping a serial numbered item. Fail. The P320 can be disassembled and the grip swapped out. The Glock offers no length or capacity change. Fail, the M17 has three grip units and mag capacities. The Glock offers no barrel change ability, you can't drop in a shorter barrel to make it compact, the M17 can with shorter slides and again, grips to alter that, too. Both are DAO, but the M17 has an additional external safety. Glock has offered that for certain contracts and for the most part it SHOULD have been included - ask cops suffering from the dreaded Glock Leg Syndrome.
It's not that any of the newer guns in history were a "game changer." For that matter they got to compete on one side or another, sometimes both in WWII, and their has been no conclusion that one soldier armed with a certain pistol had the advantage over the other. This fact is conveniently ignored by a lot of pistol fans - handguns in combat are not a significant sidearm and are mostly intended to denote rank and status. Not ability, either. They are at best a low intensity conflict personal defense weapon. If the mortar rounds are flying and automatic fire is the rule of the day, those who could carry a pistol resort to the main battle rifle. Some generals in WWII were known to carry the M1 with them in the field at all times rather than a pistol. Good thing to do for security, too - pistol carriers are a high profile target to be taken out as they are frequently higher level command. The last thing you want is a big red arrow in your hand pointing you out as somebody who makes decisions and directs the flow of combat. Let the staff officers have them sitting in tents behind barbed wire waiting to jump into their foxhole under their desk.
What we have with the M17 is a gun that can fit the carry requirements and be serviced more easily at the unit level without as many critical failure issues redlining them to be sent up the maintenance chain. It leaves that armorer more time to work on the much more important MG's and larger weapons which need to be put back on the line. PIstol repair is a time waster and negatively impacts our combat logistics in the big picture. We certainly do not want a frame with integral molded chassis. Glock had it's day, it was the leading edge in 1984, 34 years later it's now obsolete. Just like the 1911 was in 1948. We could have moved to the S&W 39 back then but blew the chance. Don't forget the Navy did not, and adopted it for SEAL use.
