Evidently, Aniston Depot is running out of M9 receivers with which to remanufacture these guns, so they did an urgent sole-source buy from Beretta. The current contractor (a company called Connectec) seems to have issues passing their First Article Test. Didn’t realize that other companies besides Beretta made M9 parts:
https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=aa230a5508717ae65e6b5de4b38fa98c
Mr. Slater
The link appears to not be working. What’s the story with this? Remanufactured M9 pistols? This interests me as I own a 92FS. Could you retry the link for us?
It’s a J&A to sole source M9 frames.
Pretty simple justification, as there aren’t any manufacturers of that part that are 1) CONUS 2) DCAA Auditable 3) meet gov contract quality standards.
It looks like they contracted with Connectec… maybe to cover the shortfall while Beretta moves… but they have not passed FAT quality testing.
Such horseshit.
You can rebuild an aluminum framed gun until the frame no longer gages correctly-- a whole lot sooner than with a steel frame, which is one of the reasons they threw the M1911A1 under the bus (even though the Army hadn’t bought M1911A1 frames since 1946).
The frame of the M4/M16 generally has no high-stress areas. The pin holes will eventually wear to where they’re hogged out and sloppy.
The Army hides the fact that once a gun is “Code H – Not Economically Repairable” it’s supposed to be de-milled by cutting through it with a torch in a certain number of places. M60s, SAWs, etc. are supposed to be destroyed and the Army is supposed to buy (complete) new replacement weapons.
Replacement frames are a work-around.