I have been tasked with coming up with a T&E course of fire and testing procedure for new duty pistols. We are looking at several mfgs polymer optic ready duty guns, with red dot optics. Does anyone have a T&E testing form/battery that their agency has used that you can PM me? Also, feel free to PM and I'll provide an agency email. Thanks.
No form, but I recall we:
Tested at 25y with various weights and brands of both training ammo and duty ammo (124gr, 124gr+P, and 147gr) from a rest for mechanical accuracy
Shot quals with a group of volunteers.
Malfunction testing:
2H shooting
SHO shooting
WHO shooting
Injured Officer shooting (compromised grip, so one handed but with pinkie finger extended to weaken grip and simulate injury)
Repeat with each cartridge as listed above.
No cleaning or lubricating between officers, round count recorded on a form in the box.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
I should get 600-800 rounds per pistol, which will be divided amongst 4-5 instructors. I will definitely include all the above. I was going to do a basic lube at the beginning, and no cleaning or lube for the duration.
With that low a round count, and only divided among an instructor group of 4-5 officers, I seriously wouldn't even bother. You're not going to produce any useful data, or discover any revelations. I was leading this effort before I retired from my department. For reference this was at the time the second largest municipal police department on the West Coast (over 2200 sworn). A couple of things I decided early on was to not reinvent the wheel and duplicate extensive testing that others had done, if that testing was well documented and available. Then we had to have a discussion about why we wanted to change handguns, what the benefits of a new platform would be, conduct a realistic assessment of the costs and timeline necessary, and have that info at our fingertips to answer the inevitable "Why?" questions from Admin.
We then had a discussion of what features/capabilities we wanted in a new handgun (PMO capability was part of that). We obtained T&E guns from 5 different manufacturers. Some new but popular models weren't included, which resulted in butthurt by some fanboys of those guns....but selecting a new 'cool' gun for issue to cops is generally not a good plan for success. Remember, you're selecting a system not just a pistol. Are there holsters in your preferred line available? Do they accommodate your preferred weaponlight and/or Pistol Mounted Optic? Does the pistol have a proven record with other agencies?
Not sure how large your agency is, or how many shooters you need to accommodate, but having a cross section of your workforce work with the guns/holsters on timed, difficult course of fire will potentially give you insight into how well YOUR cops will handle the new roscoe.
This was my long winded way of saying that a T&E form for instructors will never replace the actual work if you want the process to be meaningful.
I think we were closer to 5k per pistol, and SWAT specific testing went into 10k+ range.Originally Posted by msstate56
Realistically we could have done this though:
Look at a brochure of a bunch of pistols.
Buy Glocks.
And probably have skipped brochures stage. Glock isn't the only game in town, but we already had the leather and the trained armorers. Nothing else was better, or better enough to warrant the logistics attached of switching. We're still issuing 17Ms, but likely going to gen 5 MOS at some point in the future. Maybe gen 6 by the time the general order actually gets approved...
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
A better test might be taking 4-5 problem shooters and using that ammo to see how they respond to the new gun.
Identify any specific issues it seems to cause them and the remediation drills needed to bring them up to competency.
Maybe a mix of sexes and a range from those who never qualify first attempt to regular high 70s shooters.
That's who you'll have to spin up.
All valid concerns. It's not my show, nor my decisions. I've simply been asked to come up with a testing procedure that we will put each pistol through. Trust me, I would love to conduct a much more in depth test with much higher round count across a broader selection of shooters. But you know how it is. We aren't looking at anything other than pistols that are already in common use among other LE agencies. Available Safariland red dot capable duty holsters was one of my first criteria. We are going with optics (currently irons only), so new duty holsters are a must anyway. Thus, we might as well try several types other than just "go with brand X cause that's what we've always had."
That said- it will take a measurable improvement to pry away my Glock
AMC is right. However, if you choose to do your own testing, chronograph a good sample of your chosen ammo. Doing this prevented my job from issuing a bad lot of ammo along with our new pistols.
"Knowledge is good." Emil Faber, date unknown.
Please keep in mind:
I didn't select the pistols to test
I didn't select which optics to test
I don't have control over how much ammo we get to use
Just asking for a little help coming up with a COF on paper so we don't just go blast some ammo and say "I like this one"
We have already had all these conversations.
All the T&E guns are in hand, we just have to test them
Last edited by msstate56; 10-20-2022 at 03:40 PM.
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