Tag Archives: Springfield Professional

New Springfield Armory Optics-Ready TRP AOS 1911

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Back in the 1990s, the FBI was in the market for a pistol to equip its elite Hostage Rescue Team and regional SWAT teams, and the contract went to Springfield in 1998 for 500 M1911s crafted to very tight specs via meticulous hand fitting in the SA Custom Shop. Shortly after, the Marines ordered a batch of 150 similar pistols for its MEU(SOC) units. The HRT contract gun soon morphed into the Professional Model and eventually the TRP, which has gone on to become legendary over the past couple of decades.

SA’s Professional 1911s

Standard features on today’s top-shelf TRPs– going beyond the careful selection and fitment of components– include front strap checkering at 20 lines per inch, forward slide serrations, sighting plane serrations, the company’s Gen 2 Speed Trigger, a skeletonized hammer, premium sights, a straight mainspring housing, and G10 grips.

New for 2025 are eight optics-ready models, all equipped with an Agency Arms optics sighting system and offered in 9mm- both a first for the TRP. Priced at $1,999 across the board (we told you these were Springfield’s top shelf 1911s), there are full-sized all-steel 5-inch railed models in either black or Coyote Brown and in .45 and 9mm, as well as a lightweight Commander-length (4.25-inch) Carry Contour series in the same calibers and color options.

Springfield sent me a Coyote Commander-length Carry Contour TRP AOS in 9mm in this review; light and optic are not included.

In a nutshell, we found it to look good, feel great, and run like a gazelle. The slide-to-frame fit is legit, and the gun has no slop. The AOS system allows for lots of different optics, and it is great that SA is now making the TRP in a 9mm option, even if some consider such a thing in a 1911 platform to be an abomination.

The only rocks we can find to throw on this one are that the asking price of $1,999 is a bit steep, even in today’s inflated dollars, and that, perhaps a direct mount ACRO footprint would be a bigger hit.

The full review is over in my column at Guns.com.

For the Marines, the 1911 never goes out of style

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One of the longest standing military traditions is the sight of a US Marine with a 1911-style .45ACP Government Issue semi-automatic. From Mexico to France and Okinawa to Afghanistan, for the past 103 years the Marines have put their faith in John Browning’s single-action longslide. Now, with a few sweet 21st century tweaks, the Colt 1911 is still the choice of Devil Dogs deployed in the world’s hotspots.

Don’t tell anyone in the Marines, but it was the US Army who adopted, after an epic and legendary series of tests, the Colt prototype semi-automatic .45ACP pistol on n March 29, 1911 and dubbed it the M1911, a designation that it retains to this day. Well, by 1913, the Navy Department likewise adopted the Army’s pistol to replace underpowered 38S&W caliber revolvers that no one, especially the marines, liked. This began a nearly 100-year love affair with the distinctive .45 longslide.

Through two world wars, the Korean conflict, Vietnam, and dozens of forgotten Banana Wars, the Marines carried the M1911 in combat and in peacetime service. Some of the Corps most famous, including Smedley Butler and Chesty Puller performed some of their greatest deeds with a 1911 at hand.

Future General Smedley Darlington Butler in 1915 earned his *second* Medal of Honor with only two Marines beside him, against a force of insurgents in Haiti. That’s Butler, as a 34-year old Major– he’s the one with the 1911.

Future General Smedley Darlington Butler in 1915 earned his *second* Medal of Honor with only two Marines beside him, against a force of insurgents in Haiti. That’s Butler, as a 34-year old Major– he’s the one with the 1911.

Read the rest in my column at University of Guns