The Gun Counter

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley opened fire on the process at the Future of War Conference, saying he has asked Congress to grant service chiefs the authority to make the call.

"We are not exactly redesigning how to go to the moon, right?" Milley said at the conference according to Military.com. "This is a pistol. ... And arguably, it is the least lethal and important weapon system in the Department of Defense inventory.".........

................."The testing -- I got a briefing the other day -- the testing for this pistol[XM17 MHS ] is two years," he added. "Two years to test technology that we know exists and works. You give me $17 million on the credit card, I'll call Cabela’s tonight, and I'll outfit every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine with a pistol and I'll get a discount on it for bulk buys."

LINKY

Can I get a "Hell yeah!".

Personally, I never liked the M9. On several levels I didn't like it, and caliber was the least of those levels. It is big, heavy, didn't fit the hands well, too many places for dirt to get in, un-necessarily complicated, I could go on and on.

As much as I love my 1911s, I have to say that if I were going to pick a service pistol today, it would either be one of the Glock or SW M&P models. Take your choice. I've used both during the past 10 years, and while Glock has been around longer, the M&P is every bit as fine as the Glock. Take your pick.

But, General MIlley is right. The procurement process is a cost-laden, byzantine process that takes too long for simple systems. They argue over minuscule trivia while overlooking operational necessity. (We need them NOW).

PawPaw wrote:Personally, I never liked the M9. On several levels I didn't like it, and caliber was the least of those levels. It is big, heavy, didn't fit the hands well, too many places for dirt to get in, un-necessarily complicated, I could go on and on.

As much as I love my 1911s, I have to say that if I were going to pick a service pistol today, it would either be one of the Glock or SW M&P models. Take your choice. I've used both during the past 10 years, and while Glock has been around longer, the M&P is every bit as fine as the Glock. Take your pick.

But, General MIlley is right. The procurement process is a cost-laden, byzantine process that takes too long for simple systems. They argue over minuscule trivia while overlooking operational necessity. (We need them NOW).

On the topic of size, I often wondered about that. I shot a Beretta 92F (I think that's the civilian version of the M9 isn't it?) once, and found it too big for my rather large hands, I had trouble getting to everything without shifting from a proper firing grip. I wondered how people with smaller hands could handle it.

We got the M9(92FS) in 1985 because:

#1. NATO, to standardize on 9x19mm, and..
#2. Kiss a little Italian ass, so we could station missiles in Italy.

If you read the whole statement, he correctly puts blame where a whole lot of it belongs - lawyers.

The massive specifications and detailed testing protocols are exist because, almost inevitably, one or more of the companies whose offering wasn't chosen will go to court, claiming they should have won, and Uncle Sam's lawyers need to be able to say, "See, right here, on pages 1,362-2,769, of the request specs, it shows why we selected Brand X instead of the plaintiff's offering."

MarkD wrote:

PawPaw wrote:Personally, I never liked the M9. On several levels I didn't like it, and caliber was the least of those levels. It is big, heavy, didn't fit the hands well, too many places for dirt to get in, un-necessarily complicated, I could go on and on.

As much as I love my 1911s, I have to say that if I were going to pick a service pistol today, it would either be one of the Glock or SW M&P models. Take your choice. I've used both during the past 10 years, and while Glock has been around longer, the M&P is every bit as fine as the Glock. Take your pick.

But, General MIlley is right. The procurement process is a cost-laden, byzantine process that takes too long for simple systems. They argue over minuscule trivia while overlooking operational necessity. (We need them NOW).

On the topic of size, I often wondered about that. I shot a Beretta 92F (I think that's the civilian version of the M9 isn't it?) once, and found it too big for my rather large hands, I had trouble getting to everything without shifting from a proper firing grip. I wondered how people with smaller hands could handle it.

The M9 and M16a2 are just too damn big. Must have been a pack of 6'+ soldiers testing those things.

G19 and be done with it.

Termite wrote:We got the M9(92FS) in 1985 because:

#1. NATO, to standardize on 9x19mm, and..
#2. Kiss a little Italian ass, so we could station missiles in Italy.

This, invariably, a new weapon purchase by the military is some backroom political payoff, usually to some committee member or the state he/she represents... more often than not, the requirements are designed to exclude everybody but the company they want to win.

Durham68 wrote:The M9 and M16a2 are just too damn big. Must have been a pack of 6'+ soldiers testing those things.

WTH, over???

If you consider the M-16A2 "too big", Ruger makes a fine assault rifle in .22LR, called the 10/22.
Presumably at some point in your life, you've handled an M1903, an M1 Garand, and/or an M-14? Just for actual comparison?

The A2 was the first M-16 in a quarter-century of trying that wasn't an unmitigated POS out of the starting gate, finally correcting most of the serious deficiencies of the original design. (And to prove the point about bureaucracy designing a horse, adding in the wholly asinine three-round burst bastardization.)
All the subsequent M-4gery series did was admit, for the Army primarily, that any sort of serious riflery was considered an ancillary pursuit which was functionally optional for 99.998% of their troops. Given that, they should just adopt AK-47s, and be done with it.

On the OP topic, the general has finally noticed that the inmates run his asylum. Welcome to the Army, sir.

If he was serious, he'd simply eliminate the pistol top to bottom, make everyone carry the M-4, and spend the savings on ammo for actual training and qualification. Like any serious army would.

And with respect to the general's position, his math sucks balls.
"$17M on the credit card" would get "every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine" a roughly $17.00 pistol, worth every penny you put into the gumball machine to buy it. I think next time he talks about numbers, he should either refer to someone who graduated sixth grade for subject-matter expertise, or else take off his shoes and get down to some serious calculating. He is an innumerate moron, and promoted far beyond any explanation of the Peter Principle, however right he may be about the endless regulations in weapons specs.
If he meant to imply he could, for that price, get a total of 34,000 actual sidearms, which may well be all that he needs, he has a bare chance of being right.

When he suggests appointing a weapons board composed of the editorial board of Guns & Ammo, and any 25 combat arms sergeant majors from the Army and Marines, along with a MCPO from the Seal teams, and supervised by a single chief warrant officer from Ordnance, and who shall collectively and by majority vote have thirty days in seclusion to carte blanche test and select the next service sidearm for the next 30 years, based on utility, functionality, durability, reliability, accuracy, and cost, you'll know he's serious.

We'd also have new pistol before the first of May this year.