Tag Archives: m11

Back-to-Back Gulf War Champ: End of an Era

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Beretta recently announced the end of an era as the final M9 pistol left the factory for bound for a U.S. military contract.

A variant of the Beretta Model 92, which was introduced in the 1970s, was adopted by the U.S. Army as the M9 in early 1984 to replace stocks of the M1911A1 that dated back to World War II. The initial five-year $56.4 million contract, to produce 315,930 units for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard, ended up running more than three decades, greatly surpassing those numbers.

The famed Italian gunmaker built a plant in Accokeek, Maryland to produce the pistol, then moved production to a new facility in Tennessee in 2014.

The last U.S. martial Beretta M9, shipped last week.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Air Force Looks to go more Compact on its Sigs

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The hallmark of the Army’s 2016 Modular Handgun System contract was to be able to use the selected pistol in a lot of different roles, and the Air Force is taking that to heart. The service, which fields some 125,000 M18 pistols, a mid-size variant of Sig Sauer’s P320, is seeking to order at least 3,000 kits that will convert them to this bad boy.

Sig introduced the P320 XCompact in 2019— after the Army had already selected the M17 and M18 MHS pistols. It sports a small profile, just 7-inches long overall, while still providing an optics plate, accessory rail, beavertail grip, and double-stack 15-shot mags. Overall length is 7-inches while height is 5.3-inches. Weight is 25.3-ounces.

As the “heart” of the P320 is a serialized fire control group that can be swapped between grip modules, by ordering a kit with the 3.6-inch barrel and loaded slide, along with the shorter grip of the XCarry, the USAF can get an essentially a shorty new pistol without having to jump through the hoops of having to actually acquire an entire shorty new pistol. Welcome to modularity.

More in my column at Guns.com.

It Came From the 1990s: The Sig Sauer P228

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A more compact take on the company’s P226 double-stack 9mm, Sig Sauer introduced the smaller P228 to the consumer market in 1990 and it soon became a classic “fed gun.”

The P228 was a branch of the company’s same P-series guns launched with the P220 in 1975. Using a double-action/single-action system with a safety/decock lever on the left side of the frame, these DA/SA handguns became popular around the globe and were soon competing for both law enforcement and military contracts. While the single-stack P220 was adopted by the militaries of Switzerland and Japan, a 15+1 capacity double stack descendant of the pistol was submitted to the U.S. Army in the early 1980s as a replacement for the M1911.

The P226, Sig’s 15+1 9mm full-sized handgun, a model that was debuted in 1984 and is still in production in New Hampshire today. In general, it has a 4.4-inch barrel, an overall length of 7.7-inches and a weight of 34-ounces unloaded.

Fast forward to 1990 and a smaller variant of the P226 was introduced. With a 3.9-inch barrel and 29.1-ounce weight, the new P228 was a bit more compact while still offering a flush-fitting 13-round magazine. In short, trading two rounds of ammunition capacity for a half-inch overall length, a bit of height, and a quarter-pound of weight.

Boom.

More in my column at Guns.com

That’s not your father’s MAC

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We all know the MAC, and quite a few hate it.

john wayne mac-10 mac10

Well a subgun enthusiast created this rather eclectic looking MAC with a Practical Solutions Thompson stock for an M11/9, extensively modifying a M1928 Thompson vertical foregrip, adding a bunch of Lage Max-11 parts, a Carlson Comp and reparking the whole thing.

I have to admit, it is so ugly it’s beautiful.

mac 10 max 11 built with Thompson M1928 forgrip and Carlson Comp via uzi talk 4 mac 10 max 11 built with Thompson M1928 forgrip and Carlson Comp via uzi talk 3 mac 10 max 11 built with Thompson M1928 forgrip and Carlson Comp via uzi talk 2 mac 10 max 11 built with Thompson M1928 forgrip and Carlson Comp via uzi talk

More over at Uzi Talk Forums

SIGS in the US Military

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The standard sidearm for the US armed forces as everyone knows is the Beretta M9 (92F). Before 1984, it was the legendary Colt 1911 .45 (versions of which are still in use with special operations units.) However, what you may not know is that several variants of the SIG P-series pistol also serve.

Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com

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