British Troops retire the Browning Pistol and move to using the Glock

[Biscuit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20978842

Thoughts?

Seems sensible to me, the glock is a pretty proven pistol. I wonder what it was up against?

[TheAnimus]

The glock is an oddity in many ways, the guy who designed it had no background in gunsmithery, he had never made or designed a gun before.

He threw away the rule book, the existing pre-conceptions and made a design that quite simply the engineer in me loves.

I was firing a fairly battered PPK last week (because, why not!) and an even more battered glock. The PPK jammed all the bloody time. The glock with its better design of mechanisim never did.

[Moby-Dick]

I still prefer the Sig 229 to shoot - the trigger was a lot nicer. From an engineering point of view the Glock is impressive and its reliability would have been what won I imagine.

[Jake_UK]

Well, the Sig has been issued for some time (under an Urgent Operational Requirement for Afghan) so that was definitely in the trials (which allegedly have been running for two years). MoD bought the 'budget' magazines for those Sigs though and the mag springs were a constant problem.

At the end of the day it will have been the usual result: lowest bidder* wins.

* Whose kit isn't a total failure.

[watercooled]

For some reason I was under the impression the P226 had replaced the Browning?

I agree the Glock is an excellent bit of kit, and significantly cheaper than some of its main rivals including the Sig and HK USP, the latter of which has a spongy trigger which doesn't inspire confidence IMHO; if you hold the hammer down, you can almost fully depress the trigger. Glock's 'safe action' is also a great feature IMO.

Something I should probably already know, but are sidearms routinely issued to all serving infantry? I thought they were only issued to, for example, support gunners, tank crew, etc.

Just wish I could go to a rifle range and squeeze off a few shots of the above in the UK.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I didn't know so many Hexus regulars were shooters. Not shot any guns myself but have seen plenty of them.

[Zak33]

Glock choice seems sensible choice tbh. Much lighter than the old Browning. And I think the thing we should be most impressed with was ONCE the MOD decided to change it (took too long that decision) the actual process took only 2 years.

not bad

[Tumble]

For some reason I was under the impression the P226 had replaced the Browning?

I agree the Glock is an excellent bit of kit, and significantly cheaper than some of its main rivals including the Sig and HK USP, the latter of which has a spongy trigger which doesn't inspire confidence IMHO; if you hold the hammer down, you can almost fully depress the trigger. Glock's 'safe action' is also a great feature IMO.

Something I should probably already know, but are sidearms routinely issued to all serving infantry? I thought they were only issued to, for example, support gunners, tank crew, etc.

Just wish I could go to a rifle range and squeeze off a few shots of the above in the UK.

I think that used to be the case certainly, but with all these "Green on Blue" incidents happening, every soldier will have a sidearm as it's quicker to respond to a threat with that (Think it's about 3 seconds or something for a proficient user) than an SA80, which in a close situation is unwieldly and takes even the fastest user more than twice as long to ready up and fire.

[merdat]

Don't know why the troops had to put up with the Browning Pistol so long. Everything is so slow to change in this country. P.S. 'Hear the MP's are after a 30% rise though bet they won't have to wait long for that'.

[->EPC<-CoNv!cT]

You would be surprised the amount of people you know that have trigger time under their belts.

[Jake_UK]

Something I should probably already know, but are sidearms routinely issued to all serving infantry? I thought they were only issued to, for example, support gunners, tank crew, etc.

The SA80A2 is the Individual Weapon for everyone. An alternative is issued when that is unsuitable (e.g. tankies have access to a carbine version). Pistols are basically issued for jobs where a long weapon is impractical. For example, a doctor in a field hospital would have it as his personal weapon. Most are issued as a secondary weapon though where the individual generally needs both hands. For example, a bomb disposal officer who hardly wants to take his SA80 right up the device so would leave that with his buddies at the ICP and go up just with a sidearm.

For the infantry - whose job it is to close with and kill the enemy - a secondary sidearm is usually just dead weight and annoyance. If you were a driver you'd have one (as your SA80 would be clipped into/onto the vehicle and not very readily accessible) and you might get one in certain vehicles as top cover/ gunner or for example a sniper may choose to take one as a secondary weapon. You might also have one as an infantryman if say you're searching people/vehicles regularly (e.g. at the gates of a base or a check point) where you're very close to people and probably need to get into/all over cars and trucks.

In all cases though you're being protected by people armed with rifles (and more) so if anyone needs to defend himself at pistol ranges (<25m) something has gone horribly wrong somewhere and you can be sure you're having a bad day.

It will be interesting to see if there is a 'traditional' safety catch on the issued Glocks. I don't personally know anyone who's ever shot anyone with, or been shot by, a pistol but I've heard more cases of people shooting themselves with them than shooting the enemy.

[watercooled]

Yeah I thought the above was the case originally, but as Tumble said it seems to be the case they're issued more frequently now.

Standard Glocks don't have a manual safety, they're designed to only fire when the trigger is deliberately squeezed, not when dropped/caught against something/etc. Anyone trained in handling weapons shouldn't draw it with their finger on the trigger anyway, and a manual safety/trigger lock adds potentially vital seconds between drawing and firing.

[Tumble]

That carbine version is UGLY I'd be embarrassed to use that...

[directhex]

Doesn't the Glock have a slightly nonstandard angle on the grip, such that everyone will need significant retraining in order to actually hit their targets? I'm fairly sure I heard of such problems from US law enforcement.

[TheAnimus]

Not really hex.

The grip you use for a 9mm vs say a .22 is completely different, I think thats about as far as differences can go.

A glock is really light weight, when you fire one, you have very little mass move, due to the unique slide mechanism and use of 'modern' materials. Stripping a glock down is completely differen't, I'd suggest its easier.

But also don't think of weapons training for forces as being a case of target practice, they also have to know how to maintain the thing.

[Jake_UK]

Yeah I thought the above was the case originally, but as Tumble said it seems to be the case they're issued more frequently now.

Er, no. I'm afraid real life is much less Hollywood. The change from Browning to Glock is all about continued availability and cost of new units/replacement parts.

It is going to have the default trigger safety mechanism though. I can see pistol NDs and related injuries going up.