Army wants a harder-hitting pistol

[nightrunner]

The AP rounds that the military would have access to that we do not,they most certainly would penetrate armor, they were designed for it.

The FN fiveseven had 100% one shot stops when hit either center mass or headshot from the Ft. Hood shooter. The limb shots had severe tissue damage.

I believe if the army wants to think about the future of warfare, adopt the 5.7 or at least somebody do some extensive field testing.

Otherwise, the army cant have everything they want. They want a deadlier caliber, retain high capacity, and have it fit everyone's hands from Tinkerbell to Sasquatch. You cant have it all.

Assuming that we dont violate the no JHP rule, most logical option I see is the FNX-45, it wont fit the smaller hands, but neither will any double stack 45. It holds 15+1 of .45 is an accurate DA/SA pistol with a rail, currently available threaded barrel and the slide is milled for a red dot.

.357sig isnt more powerful enough to warrant an entire platform change. Army is too pussy to adopt 10mm. .40SW would be ok but you would have a 9mm sized gun with reduced capacity to hold the 40 and possibly have longterm reliability issues. What else is there caliber wise? I dont think they are gonna go back to revolvers.

[K191145]

Solution. Keep plenty of ammo for your "long gun", and keep it clean and good working order.
If the enemy is now wearing body armor then issue ARs in .308/7.62 x 51, change the ammo to steel core.

[btq96r]

The M9 isn't as bad as everybody makes it out to be.  I've heard every rumor under the sun as to why the U.S. Army uses it, but at the end of the day, troops aren't assaulting the objective with only a pistol in hand.  Most infantry Soldiers never even get issued one until they become a senior NCO or company commander.  It's main uses are for tankers, MP's, SOF units, and all the field grade staff officers who never leave the FOB (no joke, a pistol has become one of those 'rank has its privileges' item).

 

As to the which rifle round is best sidebar...a big thing that isn't being discussed is military shooting is different than civilian shooting.  Suppressive fire is used so units can maneuver into place and that means you use a lot of ammo to keep the bad guys heads down while your buddy is exposed and moving.  Loading out 5.56mm rounds means every rifleman can carry more rounds than if they have 7.62mm and the trade off in performance isn't worth the risk of having less ammo on hand, IMO.

 

 

Yeah. M14s were dusted off, upgraded and reissued to troops in 2010 for use as a DMR. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Even earlier than 2010.  We saw the first M14's come to our arms room in mid 2005 while I was in 2d BCT at Fort Campbell.  They were in vacuum sealed plastic and still had the wood stock on them.  I was there helping my armorer when we opened them up and it felt like we were curators handling a relic.  Units were issued a great 10x scope that we mounted onto them with a kit and about three months into our Iraq deployment (early 2006 time frame), the first polymer kit came out to give it modern options like adding an IR laser and other trinkets. 

 

It's a great weapon when you have a guy trained how to use it correctly.  The layout of one or two marksmen per squad we had works well, IMO.

[Guest theconstitutionrocks]

NATO 9mm is commercially available. It also is just 10% more pressure than a standard round, which makes it less than a +P.
 
As I understand the problem it’s not shooting through body armor, and I don’t think a 5.7 could do that out of a handgun anyway. 5.7 would be less effective than a 9mm at making an enemy unable or unwilling to fire his weapon at you.

Any round including a .22LR could take someone out with a head shot. Does anyone here think that requiring headshots in combat (or even in an SD situation) sounds reasonable?

I readily admit, the head is a small moving target, but if there is a high probability that your opponent may be wearing armor, why shoot for that area if the round in question will likely be defeated? As I mentioned in a previous post, it's either the head or the pelvic basin

[enfield]

What the Army wants is a unicorn pistol.  They want a pistol that hits like a 40mm grenade, but is small and has no recoil, so that the females and officers can shoot it.

 

They'll spend several years, waste a lot of taxpayers' and manufacturers' money, and stay with the 9mm.  It might not be a Beretta, but it'll be 9mm.

 

What they NEED to do is to stop listening to whiners and issue an effective caliber/handgun combination.  Something like a 1911, or a SIG 220.

[nightrunner]

Very doubtful that they will move away from the NATO standard on anything.

[tnhawk]

A "harder-hitting" round is usually going to be a heavier round.  There's a reason the .22 isn't often used for defense.

[DMark]

Glad to see that in the article that they were talking to a guy like Ernie Langdon.  Heck of a shooter and a great trainer.  We exchanged a couple of emails last month discussing my old Beretta Elite that he built for me back in 2001. 

 

In regard to a newer handgun...., Well it looks to me like we are going down the same path that we did earler. 

 

Early into the latest unpleasantries, I was one of the Army's five combat arms Directors of Training and Doctrine and therefore a part of the selection voting group for the Joint Combat Pistol program. I trust that whatever new effort in this area takes place, they will look hard at the selected handgun that we picked back then, the FN FNP .45acp Tactical.  15+1 in .45 ACP, I still can't figure out how they got that many rounds into such a slim profile grip. 

 

Although it sounds from the interview that Ernie thinks that the .40S&W is the way to go, I would still pick .45 over .40.  In our testing we found it easier to train everyone (male, female - - - I reckon now also GLBT) with the .45 over the .40.  The .40 S&W just seem to have more snap to it than a push in recoil like the .45 ACP.  A lot of folks where surprised that the 'smaller hand" people felt that the .45ACP had a softer recoil.  The biggest upside for the .40 was capacity and the FN guys had matched that with their .45ACP Tactical. 

 

I still don't know why that earlier program crashed and failed.  I do know that the USMC had a hard-on for another 1911 and even with the Army being the DOD proponent for small arms, make no mistake about this - - - the Marines can mount a very effective and successful lobbyist effort on the Hill when they want (or don't want) something.

Edited July 7, 2014 by DMark

[dcloudy777]

Soft-armor defeat capability is, IMHO, a waste of time for soldiers.  If an infantryman is facing an armored target, that armor is much, much more likely to be proof against rifle rounds.  Nothing that's gonna fit into a pistol that you can actually shoot is going to do a thing to a rifle plate. 

 

But even if you decide that soft-armor might be encountered, the Russians, Belgians, and Swedes have been doing a lot of research, and having some success, developing 9mm pounds that will defeat it.  No sense reinventing the wheel. 

[gun sane]

A couple of years ago it was revealed that some of our military uniforms were made in China.  Tell me how it's certain that our next weaponry will be 100% American.

[DMark]

A couple of years ago it was revealed that some of our military uniforms were made in China.  Tell me how it's certain that our next weaponry will be 100% American.

 

That was some of the "everybody gets a black beret" panic buy when Eric Shinseki was the CSA.

 

Somebody who couldn't fill their rush-production contact shipped in some berets via Canada (allowed since they are a NATO member) that turned out to be CHICOM. 

[Guest tangojuliet]

im hoping its 45 acp cheap surplus 45 would be nice :D

[gjohnsoniv]

im hoping its 45 acp cheap surplus 45 would be nice :D

Doubtful they would sell off any as surplus the way things are going.

[Guest tangojuliet]

Doubtful they would sell off any as surplus the way things are going.

lake city man lake city 

[Dolomite_supafly]

There are all kinds of pistol rounds, including 9mm, that are capable of defeating soft armor but there is nothing that will defeat a hard armor rifle plate. Those bullets designed to defeat soft armor also have a much larger cavitation channel because of how they are designed.

Here is one example of a bullet designed to defeat soft armor but it also concentratesthe shock wave.

 

This is a very interesting website regarding bullets designed to defeat soft armor:

http://www.cqbservices.com/?page_id=10

 

A full auto M4 is good for one thing, clearing a room and a grenade is more effective at doing that. Trying to make hits at anything other than point blank with a full auto AR is an exercise in futility. Belt feed machine guns are for sustained suppressive fire becuse they are heavier and are easier to keep fire in the target area.

 

As far as the 223/5.56 goes when the military decided to use heavier bullets and faster twists to extend the range they ruined the short range capability as well as the long range capability. Want to have a more effective AR? Lengthen the barrel and slow the twist down. By most accounts a FMJ needs to be going 2,700 fps to fragment and the M855 out of a 14.5" barrel drops below that threshold in well under 100 yards. So if it doesn't fragment then we can hope it will tumble but not so fast because with a 7 twist barrel the bullets do not reliably tumble either inside of most malnourished combatants which we are seeing and will be seeing. So in the end you end up with a 22lr type wound at distances beyond 100-150 yards using FMJ. This is why we were hearing all the complaints. One way to correct this is to just go back to the 9 twist. It is more than capable of accurately shooting anything up to 77 grains accurately and the most important thing is they WILL tumble in the intended target, even if they are thin. Without tumbling the bullet will not fragment so the bullet must first tumble and twist determines where the bullet tumbles inside a target. Too fast and the bullet is beyond the target before it looses stability.

 

Here is a great PDF regarding the M855 and faster twists:

http://www.gandrtactical.com/images/archive/5_56mm_military_info.pdf

 

I say go back to the original design, 12 twist shooting 55 grain FMJ out of a 20" barrel and use a heavier caliber for distances beyond 300 yards. The 55 grain out of a 12 twist was a capable 300 yard combination because it tumbled very quickly and had higher energy levels than the 45 ACP. The M193 does 3,300 fps out of a 20" barrel and is still has the velocity to fragment at 200 yards, far beyond the current configurations, and even if it doesnt fragment it will still tumble.

[Garufa]

My only question is how much this will this cost us.....just for the Army to make a decision.  I guess around 5 million.

[Dolomite_supafly]

If I had to pick one it would be the FN45 with a threaded barrel and second would be an M&P45, again with a threaded barrel.

 

Now if I had a choice of calibers it would be something similar, and more modern, to the 7.62x25 with an all copper "pointy" bullet with a weight of ~75 grains and going 1,500 fps. Perhaps a "pointy" bullet similar in design to the 9mm I posted above to defeat armor as well as concentrate the hydrostatic shock. Or if we want BIG then go with a 50 GI.

[graycrait]

 I have to believe "big" Army is training folks who are issued sidearms better than I was trained even though I was issued a "handgun"  from '82 through '98 although having enlisted in '73. If not, then discussions of caliber, action, etc., means very little.  A spear or a sling would likely be as effective.  The only guys I knew who had enough sidearm training ammo to make a difference fell under the "special" moniker.  Only after changing MOSs at FT Bragg did I ever have any sidearm training by someone who knew what they were doing.  You were better off training with a privately owned weapon with your own ammo.  So, other than Spec Ops I suspects graybeards in charge of the Army probably don't know or care about sidearm issues as long as they have a pretty one the armorer dotes on.  What I do remember about the 1911s that were issued during my time is that they were in operational condition but that is all.  They all sounded like castanets when handled, rattled in the holsters even.  They had to be heavily oiled or would turn orange in the holster.  It got so bad with my last one that I carried it in an oily rag tucked into the holster.  

 

I vote for a striker fired handgun that all metal parts are ferretic nitrocarburized, with a "space age" polymer frame, requiring little lube, caliber 9 or greater. I would like to have it in a caliber that I can easily find anywhere in the world. As far as sidearm goes any of the usual suspects would likely work and fit the hand of most carriers.  The only advantage to issuing the 1911 is that the LOP and grip fit the vast majority of intended users, the XDM also comes to mind.  At least one striker fired pistol is even easier to dis/reassemble than the 1911.  Sig 220s are great, especially the SA models,  but the grips are big, as if the M9's grip isn't.    

Edited July 13, 2014 by graycrait

[DMark]

..... I suspects graybeards in charge of the Army probably don't know or care about sidearm issues as long as they have a pretty one the armorer dotes on.....

 

Having been one of those Graybeards - - - I agree 100% with your statement. 

 

As I mentioned in another post to this thread I was a member of a council of an earlier pistol selection program.

 

AND....., I was the Only Gun Guy!  :eek:

 

Think about that. 

 

You have the five combat arms directors in charge of their branch's training and I was the only shooter among them.  While I spent my weekends in competition shooting somewhere (or conducting training), these other guys where on the golf course. 

 

We know what a golf course is......

 

A sad waste of what could be a fantastic rifle range! 

[DaveTN]

I think in these discussions we tend to lose sight of the application and the desired result.

The application is a close in firefight with an enemy either, firing his weapon at you, or preparing to fire his weapon at you.

The desired result is to make him unable or unwilling to fire his weapon. Death may be a desirable outcome; but not a requirement.

Body armor is not a factor. A handgun round has little chance of fully penetrating military body armor.

A headshot from almost any caliber will result in an instant stop of the threat. So if you have the skills to do that in a firefight; caliber is really not an issue.

So we are taking about stopping a shooter with shots to the body. Mass and surface area driven by velocity are the key factors.

[DaveTN]

You have the five combat arms directors in charge of their branch's training and I was the only shooter among them.  While I spent my weekends in competition shooting somewhere (or conducting training), these other guys where on the golf course.

It’s the same thing in Police Departments. Politics, rumors, taking isolated incidents and applying them across the board, instead of looking at the main application.

[cch2a]

When I was in 06-10' we still didn't get enough pistol training to be proficient. I was an MP and we were issued M9s. I qualified expert but was still terrible looking back. We shot maybe a couple times a year with them and usually only 50-100 rounds. Its funny as a LEO I get far better training opportunities with both rifle and pistol. I look at it as the Army taught me how to fight while LE taught me to shoot. More on topic my choice for military sidearm would be FN or Smith and Wesson M&P in 9 or bigger. Personally I would go Glock but big Army will not allow the lack of manual safety.

[Dolomite_supafly]

It’s the same thing in Police Departments. Politics, rumors, taking isolated incidents and applying them across the board, instead of looking at the main application.

The department in the county I live had an incident where an officer shot through a car door and did not kill the bad guy. After that the sheriff demanded, and got, Glocks chambered in 45. He said because the 40S&W they had been using was not capable of going through a car door. Since then I have talked to a lot of these officers that used to be issued the 40S&W Glocks and they can't stand the size and weight of the 45 Glock.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Dolomite_supafly

[DaveTN]

The department in the county I live had an incident where an officer shot through a car door and did not kill the bad guy. After that the sheriff demanded, and got, Glocks chambered in 45. He said because the 40S&W they had been using was not capable of going through a car door. Since then I have talked to a lot of these officers that used to be issued the 40S&W Glocks and they can't stand the size and weight of the 45 Glock.

That’s what I mean. We didn’t shoot cars, but a guess the situation could arise. Did he go try to shoot though a car door with a .45? I would choose a .357SIG for shooting though car doors. But for shooting people I would choose the .40S&W for a high capacity duty weapon.

[QuietDan]

Definitely think they ought to go back to the M 1911. Armies need good weapons, but the weapons must also be produceable in volume and sustainable over time. The weapon itself is merely the tip of the spear, the "logistics tail" is doubly important. There is a lot of native infrastructure for the M 1911, and years and years of working the bugs and kinks out of the weapon. It is also highly produceable, produceable by probably hundreds of companies. The weapon is also sustainable, there are thousands of companies that can produce accessories and parts, especially spare parts as required. There are also tens of thousands of people who can repair and maintain the weapons as well. Additionally, the initial patents are expired, which keeps the costs down. 

Edited July 13, 2014 by QuietDan