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The Army’s New Pistol | April 2018 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Dan Martinez
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When SIG was announced as the winner, Glock immediately filed a protest,
arguing that the Army did not complete all the testing outlined in the
original Request For Proposal. In June of 2017, the Government
Accountability Office rejected the protest and the selection of the SIG
P320 was settled.
To the left is a field stripped SIG P320. Field stripping the SIG takes
about a minute and requires no tools. The “gun” is actually that silver
piece of metal with the trigger attached. The grip is just a plastic shell.
The fire control unit, aka the chassis, is the serialized piece. The serial
number is visible through a window on the right side of the plastic grip
module when the pistol is fully assembled.
The grip frame is available in three circumference sizes, small, medium,
and large. Each M17 (the military model designation of the new standard
service pistol) is shipped to the Army with all three grip sizes. Issued
pistols can be sized to fit the individual soldier.
You will notice some differences between the M17 in the soldier’s hand above,
compared to the photo of the field stripped P320. The stripped gun is the commercial
P320 FDE Compact (FDE = Flat Dark Earth). This gun has greater similarity to
the second variant of the P320 that was adopted by the Army, the M18.
 
The M17 is actually a hybrid of the standard commercial configurations.
Both the M17 and the M18 use the Carry grip size, so with a flush fit
magazine, they both hold 17 rounds of 9mm. However, the M17 uses the
Full Size slide with the 4.7” barrel. The M18 is basically a Carry
configuration pistol with the Compact length slide and barrel (3.9”),
and the Full Size (17 round) grip length
Currently, the Compact is the only standard commercial model available in FDE
as a whole gun. I can easily configure my Compact model to more closely match
the M18 by buying a FDE Carry grip module, available today at Midway USA for $36.
The extended mags with the FDE bottom are not commercially available — nor are
flush fit mags with an FDE baseplate – only black. My Compact came with two 15
round flush fit magazines with black baseplates. Also, Full Size slide and
barrel assemblies are not available in the FDE color to make a M17 look-alike.
But fear not, SIG has announced that somewhere around the May 2018 time frame,
they will bring to the commercial market around 5,000 M17 replicas, for those
So what kind of parts or kits are available? For starters, SIG sells magazines,
barrels, both standard and threaded, and grip frames in various sizes,
circumferences, and colors. Commercially, whole guns are sold only with the
Medium grip circumference size. If that doesn’t work for you, you can opt to buy
a different grip, though availability of every conceivable option is spotty.
Then there are the “Caliber X-Change Kits”. These are basically the whole gun,
including one magazine, but without the chassis (the legal “gun”). The available
calibers are 9mm, .357 SIG, and .40 S&W. You can even go from a Full Size, all
the way to a Subcompact. There is a .45 ACP P320, but you can only change sizes.
You can’t change calibers because the .45 P320 is a beast of its own.
The P320 has certainly had some teething problems. The P320 was SIG’s first
striker-fired pistol. When the pistol was designed, SIG decided NOT to include
a tabbed or hinged trigger safety as is common on almost all other striker-fired
pistols. In August of 2017, Omaha Outdoors, an online gun shop that sells
hunting, camping, fishing, and shooting supplies, posted a video on YouTube that
quickly went viral, demonstrating that the SIG P320 could reliably be made to
fire by dropping it on a hard surface, to land on the back of the slide and the
beavertail. This came to be known as the “-30° drop angle.”
Omaha Outdoors surmised, and SIG Sauer confirmed, that the problem was due to
the mass of the trigger itself, and of another part internal to the trigger
assembly. The momentum of the trigger mass when the gun suddenly stopped when
it landed on the back of the slide, caused enough backward trigger movement to
fire the gun.
This was an enormous black eye for SIG. They went into immediate action to
announce, not a recall, but a “voluntary upgrade.” SIG’s public position is
that the gun had met all industry standard and government mandated drop safety
tests as originally designed. Since there is no standard drop safety test that
required a drop at the “-30° drop angle,” the gun really is safe, so they say.
Nevertheless, the “voluntary upgrade” program includes SIG picking up shipping
costs both ways from and to the customer, the installation of new low mass trigger
components, and the addition of a new out-of-battery disconnector system which
involves milling a small slot in the bottom of the slide.
Production was immediately halted at the time, so that all guns in production were
given the upgrade before they left the factory. Any gun that you buy today at the
gun shop will have the upgrade.
The photo up above of the M17 and M18 together, show these guns with the old
high mass trigger. In November of 2017, the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell,
Kentucky became the first Army unit to receive M17s and M18s. Photos of the guns
that were delivered show that they had been upgraded with the low mass trigger. It
may be a little hard to see, but the photo nearby of my commercial P320 FDE
Compact shows what a low mass trigger looks like. For more details, see:
An interesting aside concerning the MHS competition is that SIG had a partner in its
submission. That co-winning partner was Winchester ammunition. Since one of the
criteria was enhanced lethality, Winchester submitted two types of ammunition, the
XM1152 FMJ ball, and the XM1153 “Special Purpose” ammunition. The XM1153 is a hollow
point round.
Apparently, Army lawyers have made a law of war determination which allows the U.S.
to begin using hollow point ammunition. Previously they had decided that Open Tip
Match (OTM) rifle ammunition was OK. Now they have decided that it is OK for the US
to field expanding hollow point pistol ammunition. As I understand the justification,
it is because hollow point ammo is less likely to endanger innocents through
over-penetration or ricochet, and that HP ammo will reduce suffering through quicker
expiration of the enemy. Besides, we never signed the 1899 Hague Convention anyway!
Or something like that.
Another interesting point is that the Army plans to issue the M17/18 to many more
troops than were previously issued handguns. The plan is that soldiers down to the
team leader level will be issued handguns. A team is typically composed of 4 soldiers
and is a subset of a squad. The team leader is normally a sergeant.
So how does my Sig P320 shoot? I guess about as good as I can shoot any striker-fired
pistol. I’ve never owned a Glock, but I have had an S&W M&P .40 for a couple of years.
Most of my handgun shooting experience is single action mode, whether with revolvers or
autopistols. I must confess my striker pistol shooting skills are pretty weak.
Striker pistols are easier to shoot than true double actions. The trigger pull on the
P320 is in the mid-6-pound range, about average for striker pistols as I understand it.
My biggest challenge is learning to smoothly pull the trigger through, while keeping the
sights on target. My experience with single action triggers has spoiled me with the
almost instantaneous trip of the trigger when I want to fire. I must consciously think
through keeping a smooth constant pull on the longer stroke of the striker trigger.
This is just something that I need to learn, because this is the pistol of today. The
polymer striker-fired pistol is the new standard. The evolution of the standard Army
pistol from the single-action M1911, to the SA/DA Beretta M9, now to the SIG M17/18
reflects this truth.
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