Mark It Zero, Smokey

A couple of times a year, we hear a rumor that the Army is going to dump the Beretta M9 as a service pistol and go back to something in .45. Some people even claim we’re going to see the error of our heathen ways and welcome the venerable 1911 back into the fold with repentance and glee while the Holy Ghost of John Moses Browning forgives us for our folly.

Sorry, folks. It’s not going to happen.

The government bought nearly half a million M9 pistols in 2009. That’s not something they’d have done if the platform was on its way out. The sheer cost of replacing not just the pistol, but its whole support system of training, magazines, and other parts would be staggering. Then there’s the problem of using ammunition that’s completely incompatible with everything else NATO uses. Good luck getting Congress to greenlight that.

And what is this “Modular Handgun System” they’re gabbing about? The Sig Sauer P250, a botched idea of a pistol in both concept and execution that even the Dutch don’t want. Let’s not forget the pistol’s failure in the 2010 ATF trials, during which Sig Sauer contended,

that ATF placed too great an emphasis upon reliability in determining which offers should continue to phase III. In this regard, Sig Sauer argues that reliability was only one of a number of elements to be considered in the live-fire assessment, and notes that reliability was not identified as having any more importance than the other elements.

Yeah. That’s a hard one to live down. Sorry, true believers, but the Beretta is here to stay for the foreseeable future.