Why does the Military hate M9s

Discussion of GBB (gas blowback) replicas.

Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Pharaoh 6 » Thu Nov 21, 2013 8:13 am

Wow! A 17 year old who is an expert on Military Weapons and why they do or don't work in combat.

This is my personal experience and opinion and was shared by most people I served with in Afghanistan. The main issue with the M9 is ergonomics. Just like Welshy pointed out. The grip is large (even for my big hands) making it difficult to manipulate the safety, mag release and slide release. No matter how much practice I've had with the weapon I always forget to take the safety off. Probably because I grew up on a 226 and a Glock. Most of my peers just carried the M9 on the FOB to avoid carrying our M4s. The safety on mine was always off. This way I never had to worry about forgetting.

On patrol I never bothered with the M9. Too much weight for what it was. My personal opinion is if I draw my M9 in combat something has gone very wrong because someone really screwed up. At that point my favorite piece of gear is my boots. For Running.

My MARSOC buddies had their custom 1911s with a few Glock 19s. The ODA that replaced them carried the Glock19, but a few had the M9 (because they didn't have enough Glock holsters to go around).

The Army doesn't change the pistol because it's an expensive and long process with little return. Most of the people issued a pistol are staff guys and medics. People who really don't need a gun, but we give them one to make them feel good. For those of us who really need a pistol (line officers, CA, PSYOPS) we don't carry them due to the reasons listed above.

So why spend the money?

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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Alien_Hunter » Thu Nov 21, 2013 10:37 am

The military did use a lot of m9 pistols and may still use them. I was reading (it's like a yearbook lol?) a book about the CV-N Something and the SEALS all had M9's and tricked out M4 CQB rifles.
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Welshy McSheeplove » Thu Nov 21, 2013 11:06 am

The M9 is still standard issue for every branch of service except for the Coast Guard. However guys who can get different weapons, specifically SOF units, have ditched the M9 in favor of Glock and SIG platforms.
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Jester316 » Thu Nov 21, 2013 11:11 am

Welshy McSheeplove wrote:The M9 is still standard issue for every branch of service except for the Coast Guard. However guys who can get different weapons, specifically SOF units, have ditched the M9 in favor of Glock and SIG platforms.



I'd give both my kidneys and left big toe for a Sig MK25...
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Jerm_G » Thu Nov 21, 2013 12:20 pm

There was an attempt in the past decade to change from the M9 but it ran into a little problem. Not a single service could decide on the action they wanted let alone what caliber. Marines wanted .45s, the army, wanted 40s and the Air Force and Navy wanted 9mm. Some wanted SA/DA, some wanted DA only, others wanted striker fired, and of course Marines wanted single action in the mix as well. Basically it turned into a huge debacle. The problem the military faces is that not only does the gun have to be combat capable but it has to fit a huge range of people and has to be agreed on across the services. Not an easy task to accomplish.

Then you still have to deal with the corruption in the procurement process. Often the best performing product is not the winner. It's the one that comes from an existing contract holder. In many of the contracts of the past there is a line that only allows for the winner to be from a major small arms contract holder (Colt, FN, HK). Not a big three? Tough shit. That was how the IAR contract was won by HK. Out of the big three, they had the winning design. But they did not meet the requirements for the contract. The primary part of the contract, which was well publicized, was that the rifle had to operate from both the closed bolt on SA and from the open bolt on full auto. One company made that happen and even out preformed all the competitors during testing. The rest failed to meet standards and just submitted a heavy barreled version of their current guns. The Marine IAR is just a longer barreled HK-416 with optics and a bipod. "Fixing" the procurement process is common in the DOD.

With the M-4, the first several tests never allowed testing beyond the capabilities of the M-4 platform. So parts had to be changed out based on M-4 specs and tests were never designed to go past the M-4's capability. Also see the above clause. So naturally, because the testing wasn't allowed to test further the result was "no significant improvement" over the M-4 design. Then small businesses were not allowed to compete. Violation of Federal law... Then in the latest round, they were but had to hand over production rights to Colt and FN. Despite abysmal performance of the M4 in testing as it came in last place (every time) and the second worse performer had less than 1/3rd of the amount of stoppages, The M-4 was still declared the victor. The Army gets the patent rights soon for the M-4. They don't want to change and the industry knows it.

As with energy transfer, those numbers only work if the round stops and dumps that energy into it's target. With full metal jacket rounds you almost always have over penetration.9mm for some reason has significantly more over penetration than others. So the name of the game is generally a bigger hole or more bullets. Modern bullets generally produce similar energy transfer when they stop. There really is not much of a difference between pistol rounds. The whole argument is moot. DoD does need a handgun that is reliable and does not have a 12 pound trigger pull.
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Tankwitch » Thu Nov 21, 2013 2:01 pm

Which could be fixed on the M9 by changing the linkage bar/trigger group and buying better magazines.
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Solid » Fri Oct 10, 2014 11:51 pm

I didn't full on HATE the M9 when I was issued it, but I wasn't exactly excited to use it. It felt way too chunky for what you were shooting, especially since you have to wear gloves at all times. The ones the Army has nowadays are so worn down and janky you could do things like wiggle the front sight post. Magazines when the are empty would get stuck when you are trying to reload, you'd have to try and pinch the bottoms with your stupid gloved fingers, never had any feeding or jamming issues though. The one thing that gets me though every time is that God damn full retard safety on it. That phony pony would get caught on everything and suddenly you are running around with the safety off because you brushed up on a post. It did have a very nice trigger pull though, I'll give it that. There are just plenty of other pistols that are much more preferred in my experience, like I myself am a big Sig fan. Honestly if they got those updated, slimmer M9's I've seen floating around, I think they would become more appealing.

Welshy McSheeplove wrote:Standard issue handgun for Marines is still the M9. Also, very few infantrymen actually get issued handguns, so their use as "backup" weapons is pretty limited.


Too true. In my last deployment, I think there were only maybe 2 dozen pistols for the entire squadron of 350, and they went to the medics because its shitty to take care of people around the aid station and loading/unloading patients in MRAPS with a rifle and the rest went to the high ranking officers and NCO's above an E7 because they are far too busy with important adult stuff to carry rifles around.
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby JermDaa » Mon Jun 29, 2015 6:20 am

Soldiers have a love/hate relationship with the M9 service pistol. Army Times asked for opinions of the M9, and heard from troops whose experience involves four of the services
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby ogrejager » Mon Jun 29, 2015 6:57 am

Necro much?
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Nark » Mon Jun 29, 2015 2:40 pm

I was actually looking this topic up a few weeks ago and found thisfrom earlier this year and this from a couple years ago which could still hold water about why the M9 is so looked down on.

Jester316 wrote:
Welshy McSheeplove wrote:The M9 is still standard issue for every branch of service except for the Coast Guard. However guys who can get different weapons, specifically SOF units, have ditched the M9 in favor of Glock and SIG platforms.



I'd give both my kidneys and left big toe for a Sig MK25...


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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby Steve » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:01 am

I hated the M9. Nothing that heavy should recoil that poorly. My perception is that, for me, the M9 has way too much muzzle flip for a 9mm, and a gawdawful torsional twist left that simply shouldn't exist. Trigger pull felt exceedingly heavy in double action, and had a ton of creep in single action and a stupidly long reset.

Engaging the safety decocks the weapon, which I personally actively dislike. The mag release is irritatingly placed for my medium-sized hands. Adding CTC Laser Grips made this worse for me. The fixed sights were meh at best. Pretty sure they sucked so hard that I ended up painting the front sight post with Wite-Out. Somewhere around 5k rounds through it, it got a weird wobble because something was slightly out of alignment and one of the frame rail guides was rubbing harder on the left side of the slide than the right, which probably was related somehow to the torsional twist on recoil. Had a couple of armorers evaluate the pistol on different occasions, apparently this was not unusual. In it's defense, it ate another 10k+ rounds without blowing up, though.

If you remove the slide from the frame and pull the trigger (allowing the hammer to fall forward) it can (over time) actually damage the frame of the pistol (melt it down and get a new one damage, not replace the hammer damage).

Oh, and the shitbirds at Beretta waited until the Army started looking for a replacement handgun before trying to sell the army on changing the contract to the "improved" M9a3 at a lower cost per unit than the Army was paying for M9s. Seems like Beretta knows they are pushing a piece of crap.
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Re: Why does the Military hate M9s

Postby ClownBaby » Tue Jun 30, 2015 1:24 am

So, what you're saying is you don't like the gun? :D
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