So WTH is up with these tests and trials. Shouldn't that be something tested during the evaluations.
Was Sig "getting" the contract another political favor that came to fruition. I really seems that someone hates Glock. Don't finish the trials, toss Glocks law suit, release the Glock bashers, discredt them for being whiners, accuse them of being "butt hurt".
I can see it now. Get that contract signed before anyone finds out, if we have to fix it, we will suggest everyone wear a short lanyard.
Now I suppose Sig will throw an "army" of lawyers at the whistle blowers.
It will be interesting to see Sigs response and Glocks. As a matter of fact anyone that submitted a pistol to the trials should be bellyaching.
The 1985 JSSAP trials wasn’t made open public knowledge for some time after the bid. The MHS full data on the whole program isn’t available yet either, so there are a lot of questions that I don’t think we’ll have answers to until someone files a FOI request and the whole program is made public.
Given the selection of the Sig. Personally when you look at the actual RFP of what they were looking for in a “Modular Handgun System”, the Sig 320 was a closer fit than the Glock. That’s not saying the Glock couldn’t do the job, just that the Sig 320 met the criteria a bit better.
Re: your comment of “Get that contract signed before anyone finds out” – There’s something there.
Look at the timing of the announcement. The contract was awarded literally days before James Mattis was sworn in as Sec Def. Most seem to think (and it makes sense to me) that they skipped the testing of the compact pistols and awarded the contract because they feared Mattis would step in and shut the program down. I haven’t seen anything else that makes much sense for why they went 90% of the way, then just decided to award…the timing vs. new Sec Def makes sense to me. And keep in mind what it was they skipped, only the testing of the compact pistol. The full size order is 280,000 pistols. The compact order is only 7,000 pistols…so keep that in mind. The part that wasn’t tested was a very small % of the total order.
What the fix in? There will always be those who will ALWAYS claim the fix was in. Sig did better meet the criteria, their bid was over $100 mil less than Glock’s, their plan for the ammunition was better, and their licensing agreement was preferable. Since they didn’t do the whole process all the way to the end, someone will always cry foul; but it’s not as if put together a half azz bid and won…they put together an extremely strong bid and won.
What has yet to be seen is the ACTUAL criteria used for the tests, and the full data package on how well each pistol did in those tests. Without that information, it’s hard to really make a sound judgment of whether the 320 full size was adequately tested or not.
