Mossberg Lands $11 Million Army Contract for M590A1 Shotguns
The military’s nearly 40-year love affair with the Mossberg 590 pump-action 12 gauge has no end in sight.
The oldest family-owned firearms manufacturer in America announced last week that the Army has awarded it a contract valued at approximately $11.6 million for additional Mossberg 590A1 shotguns. It is unclear if the award is an extension of the $19 million maximum value contract for 17-inch M590s issued in September, but either way, the Army is getting a lot more 12-gauge Mossys.
The M590 is based on the company’s legendary M500 platform, but features a heavy-walled barrel, metal trigger guard and safety, a clean-out magazine tube, and a thick Parkerized or Marinecote finish. Numerous stock, forend, and barrel length options exist, as well as the always popular heat shield and bayonet lug.
The M590 series famously withstood the military’s grueling MIL-SPEC 3443E testing protocol for riot-type shotguns, which included running 3,000 shells with two or fewer malfunctions. As TFBTV’s James Reeves has extensively documented with his 500-round shotgun burndown series, that’s a heck of a standard, and few scattergatts can meet it.
A well-used 30-year-old Mossberg 590M that survived Hurricane Katrina and is still kicking. This thing can’t be killed. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The Army has used shotguns since before World War I. As noted by Canfield, the first Army contract for the M500 series was issued in 1979 for guns with oiled wood furniture, a standard which soon shifted to synthetic stocks.
The first contract for the updated 590s with a heatshield and bayonet lug was issued in 1987 and, since then, all branches of the U.S. military, as well as the Coast Guard, have ordered the gun at one time or another for tasks including security, EPW control, EOD use, and in door breeching with barrel lengths varying between 14 and 20 inches.
The guns have seen frontline service in Panama, Desert Storm, and during the GWOT era in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trench Grenade, a GunTuber who is an active duty Army infantry instructor in his day job, last week did a 500-round burn down with the M590, further underlining it as the people’s champ.