Fun With the New Army Pistol!

Interesting e-mail from Mike O on Bloomberg News' story on the rollicking military pistol funnies:

Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., fresh from winning military contracts in Afghanistan, now wants a bigger prize back home: an Army deal worth as much as $500 million that would be its biggest defense order ever.

The largest U.S. handgun company, maker of the .44 Magnum popularized in Clint Eastwood's ``Dirty Harry'' movies, will bid on a contract to make about 645,000 of its .45-caliber pistols over the next 10 years, Chief Executive Officer Michael Golden said in an interview. Italy's Beretta Holding has the current Army contract, which expires next year.

Mike O corrected Bloomberg's number down to the SOCOM estimate of 50,000 rather than the Big Army number.

In all honesty, my cherubs and seraphim are reporting endless contradictory stories, which leads me to believe that the military bureacracy doesn't actually have a clue as to what it wants...FUBAR Time Again! AMERICAN RIFLEMAN reported in its current issue that the new specs might put the plain old 1911 back in the running, which is NOT what I'm hearing from all the pesky seraphim...I am hearing that some of the various pieces of SOCOM are losing patience with the endlessly delayed specs — remember, the shooter guys were expecting to get guns in their hand this November! — and they're looking at breaking off and just ordering pistols on their own.

Should such a schism happen, it's a virtual certainty that the teams will spec 1911 .45s, which would make the firearms industry virtually swoon with joy. Springfield and Kimber would certainly have the inside track with their existing military and government contracts, but S&W, Taurus and SIGARMS would be unlikely to sit on the sidelines with a SOCOM contract, however small, up for grabs.

And Glock...let us speak of Glock...Glock won't even talk to me about what they're cooking up in the back room for SOCOM, with orders coming directly from Herr Glock hisself. I take this to mean there IS INDEEDY something in the back room, probably the long=rumored Glock 1911 or the SOCOM variant...and Glock has old and very well established contacts in the shadow war community. Plus, Glock has the advantage of having never embarrassed anyone with a high rank in the military by jumping the gun on announcing something...oh! Did I say that out loud? Sorry!

BTW, nice thread on the SIG Forum about this week's episode of SHOOTING GALLERY with Bruce Gray.

BBTTWW, I just drove through Boulder...you should SEE Camp JonBenet! The street acorss from the Cop Shop is blocked while the Media Weasel Squad make yet greater fools of themselves than usual...wow...you mean the whack-job didn't do it!!! We are so shocked!