The MHS would replace the Army's inventory of more than 200,000 outdated M9 pistols and several thousand M11 9mm pistols with one that has greater accuracy, lethality, reliability and durability
While being up front, I am still a fan of the 1911, single action platform.
I do understand the shortcomings of the design, for military, it needs a lot of maintenance, there are a lot of parts some need to be fitted, and it does not have a large capacity, in a single stack design, and while it has served well for 100 years, something newer may will fit the needs of the military better.
Perhaps it is time for the Military to adopt a striker fired pistol, in somewhat quoting Jeff Cooper, traditional double action pistols were the answer to a question not asked. The M9 and M11 getting off a first good shot is tough, I'm sure the pistols are very accurate, they are just really hard to learn to shoot accurately, going to a striker fired system, would give them a lighter, more consistent trigger pull, which should lead to better accuracy, which is paramount in being able to hit the important parts, that make people want to be somewhere else.
After 25 years the striker fired platforms have shown themselves to be pretty reliable and durable, with very little maintenance. They have fewer parts for inventory, techs can be trained in one to two days to repair them. With many of the newer ones the grip size is adjustable, to actually fit a wide variety of shooters, over all grip size being one of the complaints with the M9.
As to caliber maybe they need a new bullet rather than a different caliber. 9 mm is a good caliber, but standard FMJ's simply suck at stopping people, issue something like the Federal EFMJ, instead of standard 124 grain NATO hard ball ammo.
But the bottom line is they need to actually train people, not just qualify them, but train them how to use a handgun, and being the military I'm not sure that would happen across the board. Training is just not the cost of ammo, but scheduling and budgets and keeping paperwork to make sure those carrying handguns, are proficient, beyond lobbing 2 magazines of ammo at a rather large sheet of paper.
3 comments:
I think a redesigned 9mm bullet and better training with the pistols they have would do as much good as a new program to find a new gun and cartridge.
The soldiers need better pistol training in any case. If they do not get it, I don't think a new gun will help very much. So I think we should be looking at the software before worrying about new hardware.
As long as we insist on complying with the Hague Convention, we'll be sticking with ball ammo, and suffering its limitations.
Hardball ammo of about .38 caliber was proven ineffective once before (Moro Insurrection), resulting in the adoption of the .45 ACP and the 1911.
To move to more effective, modern expanding bullets, we're either going to have to let go of our silly, non-binding attachment to the Hague Convention (we didn't even sign it). If we don't and restrict ourselves to FMJ, then we might as well go back to .45 ACP in some platform.
Which platform? Seems like these days "everybody knows" that the 1911 just doesn't work anymore. And if you go to a striker-fired, double stack gun in .45 ACP, you're going to have grip fit issues with smaller statured soldiers.
I guess ultimately it's going to come down to whether or not we are going to continue to honor the restrictions of the Hague Convention...
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