Side note:
I am surprised (yet relieved) that no one has said "they should look at the XD"....
I guess folks on this site know better.
Side note:
I am surprised (yet relieved) that no one has said "they should look at the XD"....
I guess folks on this site know better.
“A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.” - Shane
Totally understandable. But then you write procurement specs for size, weight, trigger pull, & capacity. Which is pretty easy to do and doesn't open you up to potential trouble. Again, I doubt it will happen here because there's a big enough tent for everyone to play. Just the Red Team in me pointing out the obvious.
Again let's say we're talking about engines and someone says "it has to be a V6 because we want 300hp and a car that weighs no more than 3500#." But if someone has a car that makes those specs with a 4cyl or V8 or straight six or whatever, why are they being kept out? If my company didn't have a V6 but had a 300hp 3500# car, I'd be filing my protest. And then when my protest is successful, all the other gun companies are going to submit a lot more guns and the whole thing goes bonkers.
Or look at it this way. Suppose SIG wins with the 320. Then HK comes along and says, hey, we weren't allowed to present our most reliable and most accurate and most awesome gun, the P30, because it's hammer fired. We would now like to hold up the entire procurement for months or years while this all gets worked out. (there are actually time limits on protests that would prevent that under most circumstances, but it's easy to say that they didn't want to get into a cat fight with the procurement writers who, in this instance, are almost certainly also involved in the testing and the test data evaluation)
It's all probably moot, as I said, but it was just not worth putting in there as a potential problem.
Touché!
I find it telling that the VP9 and P320 hit the market about 3 months before the current ICE contract expired in OCT 2014. They both hit about a month apart.... Since SIG and HK have the current DHS contract (and have friends/associates/fanboys in high places) it is possible they knew the request was coming down the pipe and designed and produced accordingly. Seems awfully coincidental timing otherwise.
“A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.” - Shane
Question: Draft SoW posted in the RFI states the scope is "...up to twenty-five thousand ... handguns..."
Do any of the SMEs here have a sense of what percentage 25,000 guns is of either VP9 or P320 production to date?
Just trying to guess how much of a big deal 25,000 guns is to Sig and H&K?
It is not as much the sale of the initial 25,000, as to how many other sales you will get from saying "we are the gun that defends the Homeland". How many other agencies nation wide will copy, and civilian sales. Sig needs this contract, so does HK. It is great marketing.
“A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.” - Shane
My suspicion is that Sig has produced more P320's than HK has VP9s. I also think that Sig's production capability can more easily absorb those numbers.
That is not to say that HK can't do it, just that Sig can more easily do it with minimal impact on civilian sales.
I like my rifles like my women - short, light, fast, brown, and suppressed.