#MHS

It is easy to forget, what with all the hubbub about SIG’s selection for M17, Glock’s protest, and SIG’s subsequent recall, that the M17 program was intended to procure a “total system package”, not just a handgun. This meant, besides the handgun, ammunition, magazines, spares, accessories, holsters, and eventually optics and suppressors as well. While much ink has been spilt, and many glam photos taken of the XM17 and M17 MHS handguns themselves, we have not yet seen or heard very much about the ammunition it is intended to fire. From second-place finisher Glock, we have already seen the Federal-engineered Enhanced Barrier Ammunition. Partnered with SIG for the competition was ammunition heavyweight Winchester/Olin, and so it was reasonable to expect their entry to be something based on Winchester’s existing product line. At the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, that expectation was confirmed:

The US Army’s new centralized procurement organization has been named: In his address at the Eisenhower Luncheon at the 2017 Association of the United States Army, US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley announced the creation of a Futures and Modernization Command (FMC), which would oversee the process of research, development, testing, evaluation, and procurement (RDTE&P) from start to finish. In his address, General Milley outlined a new process which would fundamentally change the current procurement model to a new one based on that used by US Special Operations Command:

It has been announced that the US Army’s Modular Handgun System, the XM17,  will officially become the M17 and begin issue to units near the end of the year.

SIG Sauer certainly didn’t waste its opportunity to show off its win of the Modular Handgun System contract at the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting, bringing not XM17 MHS prototypes, but full-fledged M17 and M18 MHS production (or possibly pre-production) pistols to the show.

US Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley has released a letter outlining a major reform and restructuring effort for US Army weapons development, testing, and procurement. In the letter, CSA General Milley spoke of the need for a new procurement command structure:

The legacy M9 handgun is ten times as reliable as the standard required for the M17 MHS handgun, claims manufacturer Beretta Defense in a recent press release. During acceptance testing of the most recent delivery lot of M9 handguns, the guns averaged a malfunction rate of one per 19,090 rounds – nearly ten times the mean rounds between stoppages required of the new M17 MHS. Naturally, the manufacturer was extremely proud (rightly so) of this result, saying the following in their press release:

The first photos of the Army’s new M17 Modular Handgun System in action have emerged. The photos, taken during U.S. Army Operational Test Command testing at Range 29 at Fort Bragg, show service personnel from a number of units getting trigger time behind the MHS.

The defense magazine European Security & Defence has published an article detailing for the first time Glock’s Modular Handgun System submission and its Federal-engineered ammunition. The article – part technical overview, part interview, details the recent history of Glock’s MHS submission, the technical characteristics of their Glock 19 MHS and 23 MHS pistols, and the current feeling among Glock executives about their second place finish in the competition. I highly recommend our readers head over the the ES&D website, where they can read the full article for free in text only or PDF form. But, since I don’t want to bury the lede any more than I have, here’s what Glock’s head of International Sales, Richard Flür, had to say on the Glock MHS’s future beyond the US Army:

The SIG Sauer P320 – scion of the Army’s new M17 MHS pistol – is the only handgun out of eleven different weapons to fail a comprehensive test released today by Omaha Outdoors. The testing protocol involved dropping the handguns at different angles with a primed case in the chamber (no bullet or propellant). None of the ten other handguns – which included four Glocks, two H&Ks, two S&Ws and a 1911 – tested after the P320 fired when dropped. The video released by Omaha Outdoors describing the tests is embedded below:

The following is the opinion of the author, and his alone. It does not represent the views of The Firearm Blog or any other TFB staff member. But I bet it represents the views of many of our readers.

The question that seems to be popping up reasonably often right now seems to be”Is the P320 unsafe?” Well, we can’t really answer that with certainty, but we can tell you everything that has come to light as of the morning of August 9th, 2017.

Those who take advantage of SIG’s recently announced “voluntary upgrade” may soon be taking home a little piece of the Modular Handgun System program: The company evidently plans to introduce a new trigger design developed for the MHS program as part of the upgrades, as relayed in a recent article published by Eric Graves over at Soldier Systems Daily:

In the wake of the news that the P320 has failed when drop tested by independent sources, Sig Sauer has offered to upgrade P320 pistol in the wake of the failures. Note that Sig Sauer is not issuing a recall of any kind, just that they are offering a program to upgrade the existing pistols with parts that Sig may have already developed.

SIG Sauer – recent winner of the US Army’s Modular Handgun System competition – is being sued by an officer from the Stamford, Connecticut Police Department Special Response Team over an incident he claims was the result of a defect in their P320 handgun. In the suit, the officer alleges that he dropped the pistol – still in its holster – while he was loading equipment into the back of his vehicle, which caused it to discharge a bullet into his leg. From the Connecticut Law Tribune:

Strike Industries has announced on its  Facebook page that they are working to introduce SIG P320 frames. So far they have shown only one picture of their frame prototype. It looks to be a 3D printed one of a carry size SIG P320.