The concept originated during a collaborative project involving engineer Brian McDonald, who is listed as the inventor. While Mr. McDonald formerly held a position at Sig Sauer®, he has not been employed by the company for several years and has recently operated independently as a consultant across multiple organizations. The project in question was not affiliated with, nor did it include input from, Sig Sauer® or any of its affiliates.

“This patent application represents AST’s solution to further enhance the safety of the P320® platform,” said Joe Salvador, Partner and Engineer at Angled Spade Technologies. “Our solution physically blocks the sear’s movement when the manual safety is engaged. something that, to date, has not been a feature of the P320® and its variants.”

In 2023, shortly after filing the provisional patent, Angled Spade Technologies extended a professional courtesy to Sig Sauer® by offering them the first right of refusal on the safety-enhancing design. Sig Sauer® declined to engage at that time. AST then proceeded with the full patent process, and the applications publication is a milestone on that path.

More worryingly, the Pentagon’s top testing office said that during further tests, the trigger assemblies in two pistols had splintered apart and this was potentially the result of the drop fix, presenting an entirely new issue. As of September 2017, the recommendation was to “work with the vendor to identify and eliminate cause of variability in the manufacture of the trigger group mechanism.”

Testing also revealed that the handguns had a propensity to eject a live round along with the empty cartridge case during normal functioning. There was no indication that this issue caused any malfunctions, such as “stove-piping,” which generally involves empty casing ending up jammed in place, typically sticking up from the ejection port.

It is still a significant issue for shooters to be losing live cartridges during routine use, meaning they might run out of ammunition before they expect to or simply waste resources. The Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation’s said that the problem became more pronounced the more rounds evaluators fired through their M17 and M18 pistols. As of September 2017, the Army was still working with Sig Sauer to identify the root cause of the problem, after which they would need to develop another fix.

This wasn’t the only ammunition related issue, though. In tests, the M17 and M18 worked just fine with the Army’s new XM1153 “special purpose” cartridge, a hollow point round. They did not function reliably with the companion XM1152, a standard “ball” round with a bullet fully enclosed within a copper jacket.

The Army had a requirement for the new pistols to be able to shoot 2,000 rounds straight without a stoppage at least 95 percent of the time on average. The service defined a stoppage as any instance in which the guns stopped functioning normally, but where the user could get the weapon running again without the need for tools or replacement parts.

With the XM1153 hollow point, the M17 hit the 95 percent reliability mark, while the M18 managed just slightly better at 96 percent. But when troops loaded up magazines with the XM1152, the results were dismal. The full-size gun had only a 75 percent probability of functioning properly, while the compact version was barely over 60 percent.

The report does not say why this might have occurred and it’s not clear what the Army was doing to correct the issue. The problems had appeared during the Product Verification Tests and the service simply opted to conduct operational testing and evaluation with the special purpose cartridge only. This in turn suggests that troops getting the pistols will receive the hollow points as their standard round, a significant change from previous doctrine.

In 2015, the Army released the Request for Proposals and started testing the 12 submitted pistols the following year. After phase one testing, the SIG Sauer and Glock submissions were the only ones that made it past the down select. Phase two destructive testing began, but was stopped at 12,500 rounds, half of the 25,000-round required service life. Moreover, destructive testing called for the pistols to fire up to 35,000 rounds to test reliability.

Glock protested the Army’s premature selection of the Sig Sauer submission and asked that testing resume. An investigation by the Government Accountability Office found that “Sig Sauer’s full-sized handgun had a higher stoppage rate than Glock’s handgun, and there may have been other problems with the weapon’s accuracy.”

The investigation also noted that the Army redacted the results of Sig’s compact handgun. Sig submitted two handgun frames in three different grip sizes with a swappable trigger unit, while Glock submitted one handgun with interchangeable backstraps to meet the Army’s modularity requirements. In the end, Glock’s protest was denied.

“[T]here is no correlating superior performance factor for Glock, as compared to Sig Sauer’s, to support paying that premium. Consequently, I cannot justify paying a price premium of 37% for the Glock submission, even as a second award,” wrote Susan Poling in the GAO report. She did note the investigation uncovered “evaluation errors” by the Army, but could not justify paying more for the Glock.

The short of it is that Sig Sauer’s price to the government was so low that the Army felt that it had a good enough pistol at a great price. So, testing was stopped and did not resume.

Phase two destructive testing began, but was stopped at 12,500 rounds, half of the 25,000-round required service life. Moreover, destructive testing called for the pistols to fire up to 35,000 rounds to test reliability.

Sig submitted two handgun frames in three different grip sizes with a swappable trigger unit,

So, testing was stopped and did not resume.