Government Denies Glock Protest Over New Handgun

As you may recall earlier this year Sig Sauer secured the contract for the MHS (Modular Handgun System) with a variation of their population P320.

This followed on the heels of a major Glock win last summer when the FBI (along with nearly a dozen other federal agencies) chose a new 9mm Glock for their standard issue service pistol.

Shortly after Sig Sauer secured the contract with the Department of Defense, Glock filed an official protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

RECOIL recently learned that the GAO dismissed Glock's protest. It appears that Sig Sauer will be moving forward in replacing the aging M9 pistols in US Army inventory.

Glock details, in part:

The focus of GLOCK, Inc.’s protest was that the U.S. Army did not complete the testing outlined in its Request for Proposal (RFP) before awarding the MHS contract to Sig Sauer based only on limited initial testing. During this initial testing, there were no significant differences between the GLOCK and Sig pistols based upon the technical factors that were evaluated. In fact, Sig Sauer was awarded the MHS contract prematurely based upon price.

The remainder of the testing outlined in the RFP that was not conducted was intended to competitively evaluate the two proposals based upon more comprehensive and stringent testing. This testing would have measured the service life, safety, reliability, and accuracy of the pistols in use while being fired by the warfighters.

“By not completing the testing on both proposals on a competitive basis, the Army never determined which pistol would better meet the warfighter’s needs,” said GLOCK, Inc. Vice President Josh Dorsey. We are confident had the Army completed the testing, the GLOCK 19 would have outperformed the Sig P320, as it had in recent testing conducted by a leading federal law enforcement agency which resulted in GLOCK, Inc. being awarded that contract. GLOCK pistols have been battle proven by select units of the U.S. military forces for the past ten years. GLOCK, Inc. stands with the men and women serving in the Armed Forces and will continue to give them its full support.

We thank our technical team for submitting a pistol that met or exceeded all of the Army’s requirements. We also extend our appreciation to our MHS partner, Vista Outdoor’s Federal Cartridge, for creating the most effective and innovative pistol round we have ever tested, which performed flawlessly in the GLOCK 19 MHS model.

Speaking of ammunition, the DoD went with Winchester over Federal.