Army service pistols might contain specific issues in their production or testing stages. In late November 2017, the army started deploying the M17 pistol, the newest piece of equipment for its soldiers, to members of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky (Osborn, 2018). Only the third handgun the army has widely fielded in the last century is the new sidearm. In place of the M9 gun, which commanders and soldiers mostly carried, it will be made available to a broader force range. The Defense Department is taking the first step forward into better making preparations and training troops for the requirements of combat operations in the future, whether that means fighting in risky, close-in circumstances or meeting with local leaders. The development and sharing of the duty weapon come after 16 years of combat in which U.S. troops frequently found themselves in close-quarters engagements (Osborn, 2018). However, the M17 had recurring issues during testing and had certain issues regarding its usage, which made the weapon unreliable.
One of the problems that particular army service pistol has is accidental discharges. They occurred during drop testing, a fault with an earlier handgun model created by Sig Sauer (Osborn, 2018). The manufacturer implemented safety enhancements to address the issue, but the repair may have led to splitting two triggers during testing. The research also discovered that both of the pistol’s variants experienced double ejections when an unspent ball round was expelled along with a spent cartridge (Osborn, 2018). The army formed a root-cause analysis team to determine the cause of multiple ejections.
M17 encountered more stoppages while shooting ball ammo than when firing special-purpose ammunition. Stoppages are a flaw that prevents the weapon from performing as intended but may be resolved right away. Both failed the ball ammunition firing test’s mean rounds between stoppage reliability criteria. Around 50% of the M17 stoppages and 75% of the M18 stoppages were caused by slide stoppages (Osborn, 2018). The slide failing to lock after shooting the final bullet in a magazine—the signal for the shooter to reload—was the leading cause of such stoppages.
The stoppages appeared to be caused mainly by the employment of a high pistol grip. It can be described as an insignificant issue that could be remedied with greater instruction and experience with the weapon. Nevertheless, it also observed that a high pistol grip mostly caused the stoppages. Officials from Sig Sauer awarded the 10-year, $580 million Modular Handgun System contract in January 2017 (Osborn, 2018). It would deliver M17s, and the Army’s Program Executive Office Soldier have both played down the issues outlined in the DOT&E study (Osborn, 2018). Many of the problems mentioned in the paper stem from the weapon’s early testing stages, and the firm stood behind the hundreds of M17 rifles it has already sold (Osborn, 2018). Even if the weapon did not meet the dependability standards for ball ammo, it was still legal to use with those rounds.
The issues with the drop test had been openly addressed, and the weapons had passed the army’s drop test. There were only two trigger-splintering events out of 10,000 bought firearms, and they had nothing to do with manufacturing or design faults (Osborn, 2018). Although it does not seem like the cause of the double-ejection problem has been identified, the army service pistol M17 is unreliable.
Reference
Osborn, K. (2018). Analysis: Does the army’s new pistol have problems to fix? Warrior Maven. Web.