{"id":6351,"date":"2017-01-24T05:49:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/01\/24\/news-189\/"},"modified":"2017-01-24T05:49:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:49:55","slug":"news-189","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/01\/24\/news-189\/","title":{"rendered":"The Army’s First New Pistol in 35 Years Features A Modular Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The US Army is retiring the standard-issue Beretta M9 after 35 years in favor of a more modern sidearm. And like so much tech these days, the new handgun\u00a0is modular.<\/p>\n

The pistol, called the P320,\u00a0was originally designed by the German firm Sig Sauer for civilians in 2014, and it can be easily reconfigured to suit a variety of needs. The Army plans to purchase more than 280,000 of the handguns (and could eventually order as many as 500,000), and Sig Sauer says it will manufacture all of them at its factory in New Hampshire. The P320 has been on the market for civilians since 2014.<\/p>\n

Sig Sauer entered the P320 in the Army’s two-year, $350 million “Modular Handgun System” competition in which several manufacturers vied for a contract that could be worth as much as $580 million. The process dragged on so long that lawmakers questioned incoming Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis about it during his confirmation hearing earlier this month.\u00a0\u201cThis is a great testament to what\u2019s wrong with defense acquisition,\u201d said Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, citing the age of the Beretta.<\/p>\n

The P320\u00a0features interchangeable grips to\u00a0accommodate hands of all sizes—something the Army needs, because the number of women in the service has grown significantly since the Army adopted the M9 in 1982. \u00a0Beretta tried to preserve its Army contract by offering the M9A3, which has some improvements like new sights and better ergonomics, in 2014, but the Army wanted a fully modular handgun.<\/p>\n

The Sig Sauer P320 accepts\u00a0a number of attachments and accessories, like silencers. It is available in three sizes, and each can be modified for size and caliber to suit different conditions and assignments. For example, investigative work often requires a compact gun that is easily concealed, while soldiers in the field are most concerned with ease of use and durability. The P320 can convert between 9mm, .357SIG, and .40S&W calibers and Military.com reports<\/a> that the army chose the 9mm P320 over a .40 caliber model that Sig Sauer also submitted to the competition.<\/p>\n

Rather than design a sidearm from scratch, the Army decided to see what others might come up with. “We truly have optimized the private sector advancements in handguns, ammunition and magazines,\u201d Army Acquisition Executive Steffanie Easter said in a statement.<\/p>\n

So far, the P320 has earned\u00a0positive<\/a>\u00a0reactions\u00a0and experts\u00a0say its adaptability and flexibility will save money over time. “It\u2019s a very sensible choice,” says Paul Scharre, the director of the Future of Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American Security. Still, Scharre, who has worked on\u00a0drone acquisition at\u00a0the Office of the Secretary of Defense, says modularity can create problems if it isn’t implemented appropriately. “Sometimes you can end up over-designing a system,” he notes. “You want to make something that is modular for future options that you don\u2019t yet know about. It\u2019s hard because you\u2019re trying to make a common system for things that aren\u2019t common.”<\/p>\n

The quest to build a modular smartphone<\/a> is one example of the struggle against over-design. But handguns have a finite number of features to consider, and Sig Sauer has spent years\u00a0refining its modular handgun technology.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.wired.com\/category\/security\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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The Army’s new handgun choice focuses on flexibility and future-proofing. The post The Army’s First New Pistol in 35 Years Features A Modular Design<\/a> appeared first on WIRED<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10378,10607],"tags":[5310,1647,3104,11044,714,11045,11046],"class_list":["post-6351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-wired","tag-firearms","tag-guns","tag-military","tag-modular","tag-security","tag-sig-sauer","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}