The Army wants its new handgun to help change the way soldiers fight, but it has to fix a few problems first

The Army has started to roll out its new sidearm, the M17 and M18 pistols.
However, a Pentagon report has raised concerns about several issues with the new weapons.
The Army and the gun's manufacturer have both downplayed the severity of the problems, however.

The Army began issuing the M17 handgun, the newest addition to its soldiers' gear, in late November, distributing them among members of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

The new sidearm is only the third handgun the Army has fielded widely in the past century. It will replace the M9 pistol and will be distributed to a broader segment of the force than previous sidearms, which were mainly carried by officers and soldiers in special roles.

Wider distribution of the sidearm comes after 16 years of combat operations in which US troops often found themselves in close-quarters engagements, and it's the Defense Department's first step toward better preparing and training soldiers for the demands of combat operations in the future — whether that means fighting in dangerous, close-in situations or meeting with local leaders.

The decision to arm the 101st's team leaders with sidearms in addition to their main weapons stemmed directly from feedback from soldiers' battlefield experiences, an Army official told Army Times, and commanders will have the option to put the pistol in the hands of soldiers at even lower levels.

But a review of Pentagon programs in fiscal year 2017 conducted by the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation found that the M17, and its counterpart, the more compact M18, both exhibited persistent problems during testing.

The DOT&E report was compiled from April through September 2017, but the problems it documented were not revealed until the report was issued in January.

During drop-testing the weapons accidentally discharged — a problem that appeared in the another version of the Sig Sauer-made pistol. The manufacturer introduced safety upgrades for the problem, though the fix may have contributed to the splintering of two triggers during testing, the DOT&E report states.

Both versions of the pistol also "experienced double-ejections where an unspent ball round was ejected along with a spent round," the report found. The Army established a root-cause analysis team to find the reason for double ejections, but, the report notes, "As of this report, this analysis is still ongoing."

Both the M17 and M18 experienced a higher number of stoppages — a deficiency that keeps the pistol from operating as intended, but can be fixed through immediate action — when firing with ball ammunition than they did when firing special-purpose ammunition. Both failed the mean rounds between stoppage reliability requirement when firing with ball ammunition.

Officials from the Army's Program Executive Office Soldier, which oversees the programs that provide most of a soldier's gear and weapons, and from Sig Sauer, which won the 10-year, $580 million Modular Handgun System contract to provid M17s and M18s in January 2017, have both downplayed the concerns raised in the DOT&E report.

The Army wants its new handgun to help change the way soldiers fight, but it has to fix a few problems first

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