Reviews Wilson At War: Wilson Combat’s Bulwark, the 9mm Goldilocks Gun Recoil Staff July 29, 2026 Join the Conversation At RECOIL, we review every product fairly and without bias. Making a purchase through one of our links may earn us a small commission, and helps support independent gun reviews. Read our affiliate policy. Find out more about how we test products. By Dave Merrill and David Lane If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. But what happens when it walks like a Glock, talks like a 1911, and shoots like a CZ SP-01? Well, you’ve encountered the Wilson Combat Bulwark. The Bulwark is a Doctor Moreau monster-mash of John Browning and Gaston Glock, done in a different way. This pistol intrigued us so much, a pair of us tackled it for this review: CONCEALMENT Editor Dave Merrill and RECOILweb Editor David Lane. We didn’t have a gun like this on our 2026 bingo card, but it’s one of the more pleasant surprises this year. BULWARK Calibers: 9mm Magazine capacity: 15 +1 rounds Barrel length: 4 inches Overall length: 7.5 inches Height: 5.375 inches Width: 1.35 inches Weight empty: 33.3 ounces Weight loaded: 41.6 ounces MSRP: $1,899 Wilson Combat BULWARK 2x MAGAZINES $1,899.00 BattleHawk Armory $1,899.00 Prices accurate at time of publishing. Affiliate disclosure. At the most basic level, the Bulwark is a midsize 9mm pistol (Wilson calls it a “Compact Duty”) with a 4-inch barrel and a capacity of 15+1. Not too large to carry, not too small to shoot. The quasi-duty do-all Goldilocks zone essentially owned by the Glock 19 for decades. But there’s more going on here. With two editors, we tried a number of optics at different price points. David Lane has been shaking out the enclosed Osight you see here. The word “Bulwark” means a solid defensive structure, a rampart. These blocky aesthetics of war run through this gun. It’s hefty, made of steel and aluminum, with the only piece of plastic being the red fiber-optic front sight. It has angled, deep serrations machined into the front and rear of the slide, for form and function. Grenade-like grooves are milled into the grip and the replaceable G10 panels. The undercut trigger guard is strong and squared off in the front. Beyond the brutalist styling, the Bulwark shares the features and overall lines of a striker-fired gun. There is no manual safety but there is the seemingly requisite drop-safety tab on the trigger. But it’s actually a hammer-fired gun, it’s just that the hammer is fully enclosed by the slide. And that trigger? That’s a real, smooth-sliding 1911 trigger, because like a magic trick, there’s a 1911-style action inside there. This pleasant surprise is no surprise, as founder Bill Wilson cut his teeth with custom 1911s. And while today Wilson Combat makes far more than mere fancy slabside guns, it’s still how they got their good name in the first place. During a basic field strip the only internals you’ll deal with are a barrel, linkage, and recoil spring. Aside from having the name “Wilson Combat” emblazoned on the side, another clue of the 1911 origins is the impossible-to-miss grip safety on the rear of the frame, but most of the roots remain hidden. For sights, Wilson ships the Bulwark with a red fiber front sight paired with a U-notch rear. Optic mounting is handled via direct mounting with holes cut in the slide for RMR, DPP, and RMSc footprints. Pins are added to the correct mounting hole to act as recoil lugs depending on the footprint of your optic of choice. The textured teardrop magazine release is not ambidextrous but is easily swappable, a close second. THE INSIDE COUNTS To get to the guts, you have to field strip, a process made easy with the slide release acting as a takedown lever. Pull the slide back to just the right place and you can remove the takedown lever. The whole top comes forward off the frame more like a Glock (but without pulling a trigger) since there is no barrel bushing to deal with. Not only is there no barrel bushing, there’s also no barrel link. The guts of the Bulwark are alien, but not so different you’ll be totally lost. Yes, that red thing is the hammer. Traditional 1911s and 2011s use a Browning swinging barrel link to decouple the barrel from the slide at the right time during recoil to ensure proper cycling. While barrel links can be found outside the 1911 circle (most notably on Browning’s other-white-meat pistol, the Hi-Power, as well as the Ruger P-series), they have fallen out of favor with modern design. Inside, the Bulwark looks rather alien, but familiar enough that it won’t leave you guessing. The basic guts of the Bulwark are the barrel, linkage, and recoil spring. This is all you need to take out for basic cleaning and maintenance, but you can also go a lot further. The Wilson Combat Bulwark is a chassis pistol, meaning that the serialized portion (the legal “firearm”) part is an internal subassembly pinned inside the grip. This future-proofs the design and allows modular grip frame assemblies in the future. Wilson went even further, because it’s essentially a double-chassis gun: the firing pin, extractor, and breech block assembly are bolted into the slide. There’s nothing stopping Wilson from simply moving these units from one model to another, like engines in a car. From the sights to the swell of the grip, you can see the quality of work and craftsmanship. Getting it all back together takes some trial and error in how to hold everything in your hand while you slide it onto the frame, especially because the recoil spring isn’t captured. But as this is linkless, there is no floating hole to line up with the slide stop during reassembly (and no chance of making an Idiot Mark, either). A couple of times and you’ll have it done in a snap. ON THE RANGE For this review, we used a couple different optics. Merrill used a SIG Romeo-X Enclosed Compact, because it’s one of his favorites. A proven, tough optic that’s at least assembled in America. Lane tried out the Osight XR Enclosed. This is an inexpensive budget dot that mounts on an RMR footprint, has decent glass, and we’re shooting the hell out of it to see where the limits are. Barring that, just piles of ammo. There are some pistols that people like immediately when they see, and some that people like immediately when they shoot. If the Bulwark doesn’t fall into that first category for you, it might very well fall into the second, because more than one skeptical shooter became a convert when we put it into their hands and let them run some rounds through it. After recent experiences with new pistols, it’s nice to see that at least Wilson Combat is able to make a gun that works right out of the box. No break-in, no sending it back for work, no optics mounting that needs the aftermarket to solve the problem; the Bulwark worked perfectly right from the first round. In a world determined to lower expectations, Wilson Combat proves to be a cut above. Ammo used for the Bulwark was mostly the remanufactured 135-grain Berry HBFN from Wilson Combat, along with 124-grain S&B FMJ. Both worked to expectations, with the 135-grain Wilson ammo being especially smooth shooting (no one was surprised when the Wilson Combat ammo worked well in the Wilson Combat gun). The weight of the Bulwark combined with the interesting barrel locking design results in a pistol that is extremely pleasant to shoot. Like much of the rest of the gun, the Bulwark splits the difference and does it much better than most; it isn’t competition fast, and it doesn’t have the flatness that a pistol with ports or a comp will have, but it is wonderfully smooth. Like how a .45 ACP feels with its long push of a recoil curve, the Bulwark feels much the same but less intense. Even with zippy 115-grain +P duty rounds, the Bulwark doesn’t snap. Though the trigger isn’t what the best tuned 2011 or 1911 can achieve, it still works worlds better than even an excellent striker-fired factory trigger. Ours broke at 3.5 pounds, has a consistent reset that you can feel, even if softly, and a firm wall with a great break. Grip and serrations of the Bulwark are, in a word, ideal. Front and rear serrations of the slide are wide and very deep, with the edges knocked off just enough to not hurt, but still provide all the grip you need and then some. The side panels are shallow serrations that still give your meat something to sink into, but aren’t going to rub raw on exposed skin if carried IWB. All of this fancy engineering results in a pistol that’s reliable, enjoyable, and fun to shoot. On the clock, in a match, on the training range, the Bulwark performed great. MIX-MATCH, MISH-MASH It’s hard not to be at least a little impressed with the engineering and ingenuity that went into the Bulwark, but it definitely also feels a little like a “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” situation. The Bulwark has a lot of the benefits of two competing design trees, with almost none of the negatives of either. Instead, the Bulwark invented new negatives for no reason. Wilson Combat claims the Bulwark fits many Glock 19 holsters, but it doesn’t fit a lot of them in our pile, including some Safariland options, so that’s a bit disappointing. A new holster pattern really isn’t the end of the world for a new gun, but this isn’t a drop-in-everything system by any means. Don’t be intimidated – you don’t have to take it down this far, but it’s not terribly hard. Tipping the scales at 33 ounces, the Bulwark isn’t light. That’s 13 ounces heavier than a Glock 19, but the same weight as a Staccato P with a steel frame. However, the Staccato P also uses 17-round magazines versus the Bulwark’s 15 rounds. The same weight as a larger 2011 pistol, but with less capacity. Granted, the Glock 19 also has a 15-round standard capacity magazine. But the Glock is almost a pound lighter and has a million magazine and basepad combinations to choose from, giving you any capacity you want. THE APPENDIX The grip safety is basically the appendix of the Bulwark. It seems superfluous, like it doesn’t add anything, and no one would miss it if removed. But also like the appendix, it does more than you think. It’s been said that you can have a safe striker-fired gun, or you can have one with a good trigger. We’ve been told many times in the past that a striker gun had a trigger “like a 1911,” but a pivoting trigger can never pull it off, and when manufacturers start messing around with pre-loaded striker springs and other things to reduce trigger weights, things can rapidly become less safe. The drop-safety tab is just a piece of metal that keeps the trigger from moving, while the grip safety actively interacts with the system. Additional safeties do make some people nervous but ease your mind: It takes so little to disengage that it’s basically impossible not to release it with even the worst grip imaginable. THE ACHILLES’ HEEL No, the Bulwark doesn’t take Glock mags. If the Bulwark shipped with steel MecGar magazines and accepted any Glock mag, this would have been a slam dunk. Many years ago, Wilson Combat came out with a proprietary magazine pattern for the Wilson Combat EDC X9 that also fits their Division 77, eXperior, and SFX9 series of pistols. These work great, and seeing how magazines have been such a historical problem for 9mm 1911/2011 pistols in general, we’re not really complaining about them. The pin-and-hole optic systems leave a lot of small parts, so keep spares in the case. Our complaint is that the Bulwark doesn’t take those either. Instead, the Bulwark takes a new, different proprietary magazine. This choice is mind-numbing, and at the time of writing 15-rounders are all you can get (but 18-round mags are “coming soon”). LOOSE ROUNDS The Bulwark is different. If nothing else, it’s novel, and something to talk about. Well-made, as you expect from Wilson Combat, with looks that draw far outside their normal lines. A beautiful pistol, even if it doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. If you want the advantages of a 1911/2011 platform without the downsides of an exposed hammer, external safety, finicky magazines, but also don’t want the lesser trigger performance of a common-pattern striker-fire pistol like a Glock or Springfield Echelon, the Bulwark is an intriguing combination of the two. The original sin of the Bulwark that will hold it back is the proprietary magazine. From our end of things, we see the Bulwark as an outright challenge to the rest of the industry to actually do something other than copy the better engineering of your elders. John Moses Browning died in 1926. Gaston Glock passed more recently in 2023, but the plastic pistol that made him so famous will be 50 years old in a few mere years. For a duty weapon, it’s hard to see the Bulwark dethroning anything. For a civilian EDC CCW, the Bulwark is going to appeal to a fairly small set of people and will be the ideal choice for even fewer. But it won’t be the wrong choice, either. The Bulwark seems to be for someone in the Glock market who wants more than Glock can give them. Here they can step right into a familiar shape and size without retraining, but have an exceptional trigger and much better performance. It might be that Wilson Combat struck the middle distance too much in the middle to hit the mark for many, but Wilson doesn’t make mass-market guns anyway. Hell yeah, Wilson Combat, let’s see what else you can do. Why you can trust RECOIL Since our founding in 2012, RECOIL remains the premier firearms lifestyle publication for the modern shooting enthusiast. We deliver cutting-edge coverage of guns, gear, accessories and technology. We go beyond basic reviews, providing no B.S. buyer’s guides, hands-on testing and expert analysis on everything from firearms and survival equipment to watches and vehicles. 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