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Originally Posted by Sevens
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Oh, one more comment. With ZERO intention of sounding like I have never cared for the TSW pistols... it simply doesn't seem like spending MILLIONS to upgrade from a 4006 to a 4006TSW just isn't much of an upgrade. I would think when you throw that massive amount of money at something, you'd be making a large-scale change. Such as moving from a DA/SA metal gun to current technology polymer striker fire. This move I understand. But millions to move to the TSW from the 4006? That's sounds nutty to me.
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The reason for the replacement of the M4006 pistols was because the heavily used guns were nearing the expected end of their anticipated service-life. The original time-line guesstimates for how much use each of the original M4006 series guns would receive ended up falling short of the actual round counts experienced. EDITED: Perhaps a better way to say it would be the guns were fired more often and with more rounds than originally estimated would happen over the originally estimated period. (I was told by one of their weapons officers, a longtime friend, that there were actually something like 4 series of the original design 4006's ordered over the years, as increasingly more guns were needed, internally tracked as A-D series models by the agency.)
The improved machining, tighter tolerances and overall design changes in the TSW series resulted in .40 S&W guns that had a much longer expected service life than the original 4006 design.
The 4006TSW's were expected to last at least 50% longer than the original 4006's. Before they started ordering the new guns, representative 4006TSW's were subjected to extensive T&E shooting by CHP SWAT, and the TSW's demonstrated not only better durability, but maintained better inherent accuracy even after heavy use.
The 4006TSW's (and the much smaller allocation of 4013TSW's used by officers assigned to their plainclothes details) are probably not yet half way through their normally anticipated service lives, but there finally came a time when the agency decided to adopt a lighter .40 duty weapon, and the replacement is the M&P 40 (original model, not the 2.0). The M&P 40c started replacing the 4013TSW's sometime starting approx a couple years ago (after testing and review of other small plastic .40's).