Well, SOCOM has officially dropped the new handgun idea. Look at the General Information section.
http://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/USSOCOM/SOAL-KB/H92222-05-R-0017/Modification%2004.html
Posted September 5, 2006.
This notification is to inform Industry the Combat Pistol requirement is postponed indefinately. USSOCOM will no longer issue a Request for Proposal.
That sucks. 
Sucks if this means our guys may not be getting an improved weapon they could be putting to good use whacking tangos.
But, there is a potential upside â now all the companies should sell their entries to the civilian market to recoup development costs. 
I think this is a strong hint that even SOCOM is being hit hard by the costs of the war on terror. Budgets can only be stretched so far and equipment is getting worn out at a much faster rate due to the Op tempo. Its forcing them to give up on luxuries like a new handgun.
VA Dinger,
Youâre right on the moneyâŚor should I say the lack of money. This war is draining the money pot big time and itâs showing up in big ways like this one and little ways like slow pays on electric bills at CONUS bases.
Life is gonna be interesting in the near future and if we get tagged again in another terrorist attack, itâs really going to be a mess.
Yeah, we might have to do something drastic like actually get our ecomomy on a war-time footing instead of fighting a war on the side with everything else running normallyâŚ
Agree. On a side note, I love your Sig line! Anyone from VA must be my best friend (or actually be me). 
C4
Griz,
I totally agree with you! This nation has no sense of sacrifice or commitment to an honorable cause or effort for longer than about three months. This war against Islam (and thatâs EXACTLY what it is) is going to continue for the rest of our lives. If we quit fighting it, we will lose our way of life. They intend to conquer us and take away what we spent hundreds of thousands of lives over more than 200 years to achieve and maintain as a nation. Weâve given them the levers to win through our dependance on their oil and our lightweight attitude towards fighting a war they way wars are won: total effort and wholesale killing of your enemies until they canât pay the price anymore.
Weâve lost about 2700 service members here in this âwarâ and the media rails about how horrible that is. It is a lot of dead kiddos in uniform, but Iâd say to most of the crowd here to look at casualty figures from a couple of hours at Omaha Beach on 06/06/44; at Tarawa Lagoon; at Iwo Jima; at Pearl Harbor on 12/07/41; for the 8th Air Force over Europe in 42-43 and in NYC, DC and PA on 09/09/2001. THOSE losses were horrible and I havenât even included Civil War losses at Gettysburg, Antietam, etc. Where are our guts and determination and where is our unity? Weâd better get our act together as a country in total or weâre finished as a power in the world. I love my country and my time here has really made me appreciate what I have but Iâm very worried that we are going to pay a horrible price to get right as a nation.
Since this thread has already been hijacked, Iâll post my thoughts:
It is easy to blame the American people, but it is not their fault. Our leaders in government did not ask or even imply any sacrifice need be made in this war.
I voted for Bush twice. I know that the alternative (Gore/Kerry) would have been much, much worse. I cheered when we hit Afghanistan and then cheered again when we hit Iraq; it was a perfectly logical strategic plan - surround Iran, then hit it. Well, it looks to me like we wont be hitting Iran.
It does look to me that many Americans are truly âwaking upâ as of late, however. Pollsters think that dissatisfaction with the Iraq campaign means that Americans are against the war. I think that most of us are dissatisfied that we are NOT ACTUALLY FIGHTING. Our military, especially the Army, Marines and SOCOM need more men and more funding. We need to target Iran and Syria directly.
The American people will sacrifice if it is asked of them. It was a political judgement call to tell people to keep on living normally with no worries, but it was the wrong call.
Oh yeah, too bad about the SOCOM pistol!
I think SOCOM took one look at the latest version of the HK45, vomited, then canceled the whole programâŚ
Stephen
Guilty to the hijacking charge, your honor!
I was very disappointed in the HK45 change too. With LAV and Hackathorn supporting it in its development, I thought it would be the hot dealâŚoh well.
Same thing happened to the 2 year rumor that the SEALs were going to get a HK USP CT to replace the P226.
Not going to happen.
There is no need to develop a new pistol anyways, the 1911 is a proven combat platform that can be and is produced in significant quantities already.
I was pissed when I had to give up my 1911 for the M9 in 1993, so there were still plenty of old slabsides in inventory.
The SOCOM request was for an off the shelf product originally anyways so there should have been no R&D necessary. As there are plenty of fine non-1911 pistols chambered in .45 ACP available it should not have been hard to produce.
You could buy them now. One of the requirements for the new pistol was that it had to be an off the shelf product that required little or no modification to save on development costs. For example, the XD 45 ACP could be used if it was modified by Springfields pistol smiths to have a manual safety.
Not an unexpected move of course. Money is tight, and I think the government leadership as a whole has failed in trying the âboth guns and butterâ approach.
FDR had kids in the street trying to collect pots and pans. The reality is none of that scrap really did anything to swing the war effort one way or the other, but what it did do was invovle the American public as a partner in the war. There are other side beneifits to public involvment, such as the natural progression to civic involvment and participation which would strengthen the USA as a whole on itâs own.
The .gov has gotten so scared of spooking the sheep that itâs actually made some bad choices in not using the same sheep to help with the warâŚ
Back to paying for the gun, this cancellation actually allows some flexibility within SOCOM. Some units just didnât need anything different than an M9/M11 and some units may have individual preferences for specific features. I think the program costs would have been offset by savings in logistics to have one pistol, but once the âgreen Armyâ backed out, the economy of scale just wasnât there with SOCOM.
Since it was for an off-the-shelf pistol, SOCOM units can still by basically the same pistol off-the-shelf. The price would be slightly higher, and logistics would cost more, but the actual quantity of any purchases will be far lower as well. Overall, this is a cheaper alternative, as it doesnât tie up SOCOM funds, and the pistols are still available off-the-shelf, just a couple bucks more expensive.