New Army Handgun Contract

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Bkreutz said:
Look at the "Similar Threads" at the bottom of this page. :D
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So the article from March of this year said "The Army’s formal request for proposals, originally expected in January, could come any day. The competitive bidding process will narrow the field to three finalists, with a winner selected in 2017."

It has taken until now to formally request proposals or is the writer of the link I provided behind the times?
 
I am a veteran of one of the attempts to adopt a new handgun for the USAF back in the 2006-2007 period, and wrote the specs for it (which never were completely finalized). Unfortunately, the USAF Chief of Staff was the driving force behind it, and he got fired before the program got too far off the ground. So the project died. At that time, the principal concerns were selecting a more effective caliber than 9X19mm (we were looking very hard at the 9X23 Winchester, with .357 SIG and .40 S&W as backups), simple caliber interchangeability, and two sizes - one for normal and larger hands, and a smaller version of the same basic design for women and smaller-handed males. We did very extensive hand measurements among basic trainees and performed a lot of statistical analysis of them to determine ideal grip dimensions, and I'll guess the extent of that research has never been duplicated elsewhere, before of since. Unless you have been involved in such a project, it's difficult to understand the extreme difficulties involved in carrying it off. It's nothing at all like just calling up Glock or FN on the phone and ordering 200,000 pistols. The logistics details are mind-numbing and nearly indescribable to anyone who has not done it.

"It has taken until now to formally request proposals or is the writer of the link I provided behind the times? "
Issuing an RFP is actually one of the final activities of the project before selection, and it may ultimately involve several different RFPs. Getting to the point where you can develop a final RFP takes an extreme amount of work, and involves the resolution of many conflicts in expectations. It always seems like everyone has their own ideas as to exactly what an RFP should ask for, and many of them are subject to wildly differing opinions. Getting agreement of all individuals involved is a major hurdle before the RFP can be developed.
 
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My job takes me to the small arms ranges frequently and past the combat pistol range (CPR). Spend less on finding a new pistol and more on marksmanship and most complaints will go away. A harder hitting cartridge will do little good if the user flinches more from recoil. My personal experience is that the semi auto which feels best in my hand is not the one I shoot best with because of rounds fired through the one have had for a while.
 
It's all a smokescreen to hide the fact that the military has already settled on a contract with my cousin Skeeziks, who has had for decades 350,000 Colt Police Positives in .32 caliber (sorry Smith fans but that's what he squirreled away).

Won't be long and you'll be seeing Rangers, SEALs and special Marine units toting the .32 Police Positive.
 
DWalt said:
I am a veteran of one of the attempts to adopt a new handgun for the USAF back in the 2006-2007 period, and wrote the specs for it (which never were completely finalized). Unfortunately, the USAF Chief of Staff was the driving force behind it, and he got fired before the program got too far off the ground. So the project died. At that time, the principal concerns were selecting a more effective caliber than 9X19mm (we were looking very hard at the 9X23 Winchester, with .357 SIG and .40 S&W as backups), simple caliber interchangeability, and two sizes - one for normal and larger hands, and a smaller version of the same basic design for women and smaller-handed males. We did very extensive hand measurements among basic trainees and performed a lot of statistical analysis of them to determine ideal grip dimensions, and I'll guess the extent of that research has never been duplicated elsewhere, before of since. Unless you have been involved in such a project, it's difficult to understand the extreme difficulties involved in carrying it off. It's nothing at all like just calling up Glock or FN on the phone and ordering 200,000 pistols. The logistics details are mind-numbing and nearly indescribable to anyone who has not done it.

"It has taken until now to formally request proposals or is the writer of the link I provided behind the times? "
Issuing an RFP is actually one of the final activities of the project before selection, and it may ultimately involve several different RFPs. Getting to the point where you can develop a final RFP takes an extreme amount of work, and involves the resolution of many conflicts in expectations. It always seems like everyone has their own ideas as to exactly what an RFP should ask for, and many of them are subject to wildly differing opinions. Getting agreement of all individuals involved is a major hurdle before the RFP can be developed.
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As a Lockheed engineer and a veteran of a number of proposal teams, I can vouch for the fact that the RFP is only the start of numerous rounds of questions that have to be asked to get clarification on what the Government is asking for. To be fair, most of these aren't always related to the technical specifications, but terms and conditions, small business requirements, or other arcane provisions related to the implementation of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. But that being said, there are always lots of questions to make sure we fully understand performance and technical requirements. I worked on the VH-1 Presidential Helicopter Program a few years back and one of the requirements we struggled with was that the passenger cabin "shall be Presidential in appearance". Had a ton of questions about that one, like what that meant, mostly so it could be quantified and priced. Ambiguous, vague, or changing requirements are probably one of the biggest reasons that programs fail or overrun their budgets. The better the RFP is written, the better the chance of success. This one should be a commercial off-the-shelf buy. The money to be made will be in spare parts and accessories on this one.u
 
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Give 'em all G-17's or G-19's. Anyone with even a modicum of physical dexterity and maybe a smidgen of common sense can easily shoot these pistols and shoot the well. Anyone who can't shouldn't be in the military. Of course if the goal is to simply steer a lucrative government contract to a favored company, then it really doesn't matter if the end result works well for anyone or not. They'll just reinvent the wheel and end up buying the equivalent of another .38 Army Colt... or a Beretta 92. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.
 
brucev said:
Give 'em all G-17's or G-19's. Anyone with even a modicum of physical dexterity and maybe a smidgen of common sense can easily shoot these pistols and shoot the well. Anyone who can't shouldn't be in the military. Of course if the goal is to simply steer a lucrative government contract to a favored company, then it really doesn't matter if the end result works well for anyone or not. They'll just reinvent the wheel and end up buying the equivalent of another .38 Army Colt... or a Beretta 92. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.
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The thing gun enthusiasts frequently lose sight of in these discussions is that in military terms, handguns really don't matter much. They're not battlefield weapons. That's why folks in gun forums find this debate a lot more exciting than most people in uniform. The only members of the military who care are those who either were "gun people" in the first place or special operators, but even the latter are usually focused on their primary weapon.

Not too long ago there were heated discussions on the Colt forum when MARSOC operators disrespected the fancy new sand-colored 1911's special-bought for them (which civilian 1911 fans were paying $2500 for) and requested and received permission to carry plain old 9mm Glocks instead; the thing is lightweight, holds lots of bullets and works, the rest doesn't matter. It was a bit hard to criticize them, since these were the people at the sharp end who were actually still on the battlefield, in contrast to the armchair heroes at their keyboards.

Heroic "war stories" non-withstanding, in a modern conflict, just like a knife a handgun may save an individual soldier's life at a crucial moment, but they don't rate as in any way decisive. No matter the glorious "memories" of 1911 worshippers, relatively speaking hardly anyone fired a pistol in World War II; heck, hardly any infantryman fired his M1, the killing was mostly done by the .30 and .50 Brownings, tank cannons and artillery. You can actually go all the way back to the Little Bighorn; the extensive archaeological digs following the battlefield fire in the mid-80s showed that very few of Custer's troopers seem to have gotten around to drawing their Colts before they died; Springfield bullets outnumbered Colt bullets by more than 10 to 1.

So this contract is probably more important to the manufacturers than the Army, not just directly for the money, but also for the marketing benefit. Beretta didn't really take off in the civilian market here until the military (and then Hollywood :D) adopted it.
 
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At one time I had access to all of the original documentation and testing performed prior to the adoption of the Beretta M9 by the Army, and it's very interesting reading. The selection testing was extremely thorough, and the Beretta was clearly the best among all models submitted for testing (I don't remember what all of the others were). Despite the clear superiority of the Beretta, there were several challenges brought by the other makers on different grounds (that is to be expected on any government contract solicitation involving competitive awards), and the whole process had to be repeated before the final award could be made.

As some may know, there were early problems with the Berettas revealed in service, and those were corrected fairly early on.

The U. S. military has been somewhat reluctant to embrace Glock products, principally because of safety concerns. Glock pistols have been involved in a dis-proportionally large number of accidental discharge incidents in civilian police service.
 
DWalt said:
The U. S. military has been somewhat reluctant to embrace Glock products, principally because of safety concerns. Glock pistols have been involved in a dis-proportionally large number of accidental discharge incidents in civilian police service.
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Dwalt, could you provide some factual background on this?
 
Way back in 1972 as an armored vehicle driver Uncle Sam was supposed to issue me a 1911. My handgun training was only part of one day. Basically it was bullets go in here, rack the slide, point it that way and pull the trigger. Full size human silhouette target at 7 yards and all you had to do was hit it anywhere with 70% of your shots. I was truly surprised by the large number of soldiers in my class who failed to qualify and had to re-shoot two or even three times to get a passing score.

My son, the infantryman, did a tour in Iraq. His primary weapon was a 240B mounted on top of an MRAP. He had a M4 for a walking around weapon. At one point they did issue him a M9. They just gave it to him without any training at all. Handguns weren't even covered in infantry school.
He toted it around for about a month and then turned it back in. As far as he was concerned it was nothing more than dead weight and of no use to him.

My point is that to the average soldier a handgun is pretty much useless. They aren't properly trained and the majority have a rifle or something bigger anyway. While I would like to see our troops supplied with a quality weapon in a decent caliber, it really doesn't matter much.
 
For my tour in RVN, I was stationed in Saigon and made inspection trips into the country. Everyone in Saigon was issued 45s. I carried mine for a while and although I had experience on a military pistol team, I realized that I would nave more chance of living if I carried a rifle, so I turned in my 45 and got an M 16. Never fired it except to sight in, but never regretted having it.
 
DWalt said:
I am a veteran of one of the attempts to adopt a new handgun for the USAF back in the 2006-2007 period, and wrote the specs for it (which never were completely finalized). Unfortunately, the USAF Chief of Staff was the driving force behind it, and he got fired before the program got too far off the ground. So the project died. At that time, the principal concerns were selecting a more effective caliber than 9X19mm (we were looking very hard at the 9X23 Winchester, with .357 SIG and .40 S&W as backups), simple caliber interchangeability, and two sizes - one for normal and larger hands, and a smaller version of the same basic design for women and smaller-handed males. We did very extensive hand measurements among basic trainees and performed a lot of statistical analysis of them to determine ideal grip dimensions, and I'll guess the extent of that research has never been duplicated elsewhere, before of since. Unless you have been involved in such a project, it's difficult to understand the extreme difficulties involved in carrying it off. It's nothing at all like just calling up Glock or FN on the phone and ordering 200,000 pistols. The logistics details are mind-numbing and nearly indescribable to anyone who has not done it.

"It has taken until now to formally request proposals or is the writer of the link I provided behind the times? "
Issuing an RFP is actually one of the final activities of the project before selection, and it may ultimately involve several different RFPs. Getting to the point where you can develop a final RFP takes an extreme amount of work, and involves the resolution of many conflicts in expectations. It always seems like everyone has their own ideas as to exactly what an RFP should ask for, and many of them are subject to wildly differing opinions. Getting agreement of all individuals involved is a major hurdle before the RFP can be developed.
Click to expand...

This explains our country's financial deficit better than most things I've seen.
 
I did get some pretty good training on the S&W model 15 in the AF. It was only one day but did shoot at different distances and even right and left handed around barricades. It is what got me interested in handguns and revolvers in particular.

I did have a couple buddies that did use their 1911s in Vietnam. One in a tunnel he was sent down and emptied it into a sound in the dark. He only missed with one shot they learned later. The other carried a radio on his back and carried a 1911. His company got ambushed and he and only a few others survived. He used it in self defense and later played dead with it under him. They did manage to walk back out and he said he was happy to have the 45 with him.
Another buddy used his Beretta in Panama as he was an Army officer and what he carried. Told me he emptied it into a guy running at them and he did finally drop. He suspected the guy was probably pumped full of drugs.
 
I'd love to know what it has cost us for all the research, paper pushing and time wasted for choosing not only the new handgun, but worse yet...The camouflage pattern du jour.

There have been how may different BDU patterns and variations in the past 20 years?
 
The U. S. military has been somewhat reluctant to embrace Glock products, principally because of safety concerns. Glock pistols have been involved in a dis-proportionally large number of accidental discharge incidents in civilian police service.
Click to expand...
I was still a Cop when the Glock was pushed on everyone. Those that liked it, liked it because in practice it worked like a multi-round revolver. In my agency, DAs must have tripled. IMO, an issued gun really needs a safety, that little do-hickey on a Glock trigger is not a safety I don't care what anyone says.
 
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