USMC06RET
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....In 2015, the Army released the Request for Proposals and started testing the 12 submitted pistols the following year. After phase one testing, the SIG Sauer and Glock submissions were the only ones that made it past the down select. Phase two destructive testing began, but was stopped at 12,500 rounds, half of the 25,000-round required service life. Moreover, destructive testing called for the pistols to fire up to 35,000 rounds to test reliability.
Glock protested the Army’s premature selection of the Sig Sauer submission and asked that testing resume. An investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that “Sig Sauer’s full-sized handgun had a higher stoppage rate than Glock’s handgun, and there may have been other problems with the weapon’s accuracy.”
The investigation also noted that the Army redacted the results of Sig’s compact handgun. Sig submitted two handgun frames in three different grip sizes with a swappable trigger unit, while Glock submitted one handgun with interchangeable backstraps to meet the Army’s modularity requirements.
In the end, Glock’s protest was denied.
“[T]here is no correlating superior performance factor for Glock, as compared to Sig Sauer’s, to support paying that premium. Consequently, I cannot justify paying a price premium of 37% for the Glock submission, even as a second award,” wrote Susan Poling in the GAO report. She did note the investigation uncovered “evaluation errors” by the Army, but could not justify paying more for the Glock.
The short of it is that Sig Sauer’s price to the government was so low that the Army felt that it had a good enough pistol at a great price. So, testing was stopped and did not resume.
Formally adopted as the full-size XM17 and compact XM18, the Sig underwent Product Verification Testing in FY17, which found that the gun could discharge when dropped. An Engineering Change Proposal by Sig Sauer corrected this with lightweight components in the trigger group mechanism. ...
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