[Jcordell]

I had heard one of things was the modularity and thus easy allowance of the use of different calibers, though as I understand it, 9mm will still be the standard, so honestly I'm not seeing too much the point of having a whole new/other sidearm, in that regard. Unless I'm mistaken about something here.

Good point. I found a review of the 320 by Tom McHale on http://www.ammoland.com/2017/02/sig-...#axzz4ZCYX2nkh

He does a pretty job explaining the reasoning behind the switch. He seems to think it's all a little squishy as well, but at least it's an explanation. You know there have been many in the military who haven't been happy with the switch to an "Italian' pistol since it was announced in 1985. Most (if not all) of those folks are now retired and more than a few are dead, but the ill will directed at the Beretta have been inherited by the succeeding generation. Despite all the explanations I think that's the ultimate motive for selecting this new pistol.Personally I like the Beretta 92FS. I own one and back during my Army days I carried the M9 for awhile. I preferred it over the beat to hell 1911A1 that I started out with at the beginning of my Army career in 1986


Sig Sauer P320 Handgun

First and foremost, the P320 does away with the double-action / single-action operation that’s been in use the past 22 years. That’s neither a benefit or a drawback, it just is. There are great reasons to choose a double-action / single-action. There are great reasons to choose a striker-fired design like the P320. They’re just different.
So, just to be clear, the P320 as a striker-fired gun has the same trigger pull sensation from first to last shot.
The one sitting on my desk as I write this has a 6.25-pound trigger weight each and every time. In theory, when your business is teaching hundred of thousands of people to shoot a handgun, that constant trigger press makes things easier. It’s heavy enough to minimize the risk of an inadvertent discharge but light enough to facilitate accurate shooting.
The other big visible difference from the Beretta M9 is that the Sig Sauer P320 is made of plastic, or at least the frame is. In fact, most of the MHS entries from Beretta, Smith & Wesson, and Glock were polymer-frame guns. Not only are they lighter, but they’re also cheaper and easier to manufacture and less finicky about environmental concerns like rust. Of course, the bang-bang stuff like barrels and slides are all steel, it’s just the support infrastructure that’s made of polymer. You’ll also notice a mil-spec rail up front and ambidextrous slide release levers.


Those two things are the big visible differences, but what really drove the choice was the modular nature of the Sig Sauer P320. Unlike most pistols, the “gun” portion, at least in a legal sense, is a self-contained fire control system chassis. This central assembly contains the trigger, striker, ejector and other fire control gizmos and simply lifts out of the frame. The grip frame, barrel, recoil spring, and slide are just non-serialized parts.
Why is that a big deal? The “gun” has no caliber, length, height, or weight. All of that depends on the parts you use around the “gun.” For example, once you have the fire control chassis, you can use it to assemble a 9mm full size, .40 S&W compact, or perhaps a .357 Sig Sub Compact, or virtually any other combination of frame size, barrel length, and caliber.


Not having been on the Modular Handgun System selection committee, I can only guess, but I’d bet lunch that the idea of having interchangeable plastic frames had a lot of appeal for the Army folks. Some people have big hands while other Presidents, I mean people, have small hands. Sure, there are solutions on other pistol platforms that adjust grip size with insert grip panels attached by pins. But if you’re buying a billion guns that are going to get abused in the worst of conditions for a couple of decades, I would think that having whole frames with different grip sizes would be an appealing thing. No loose parts, no pins, and no grip panels to track and reconfigure. Plus, if one gets destroyed, you can just pull another whole frame out of the parts bin and swap it out.

I suspect there’s going to be a big administrative advantage to the modular idea too. When eleventy-billion HumVee loads of serialized items are purchased by a big bureaucratic behemoth like the U.S. Department of Endless Bidding Procedures, inventory management, and tracking becomes a really big deal. In theory, the modular system can make this a lot simpler as there is no “hard coded” association between a “gun” and it’s size, shape, or caliber. The serialized gun is the internal fire control chassis that works with any grip frame, barrel, and slide. It’s also not caliber specific (at least for 9mm, .40 S&W, and .357 Sig), so if the Army wants some of them to be configured in .40 S&W for a while, it’s no big deal.
All of the components required to reconfigure guns for different applications are just non-serialized parts. Armorers are going to be busy, but at least the configuring job is simple.