Glock 21 Torture Test

[danish21]

Guy puts his Glock through his homemade torture test involving sand, mud, baby powder, saltwater, shooting it with another gun, driving over it in a truck, and dropping it out of an airplane. It still works.
http://www.theprepared.com/index.php?op ... id=90&Item

This is amazing. Please check the link and enjoy it.

Danish

[mehulkamdar]

Danish,

What this guy did was not different from the standard NATO test. Every gun submitted for that test has to clear this and the Glock 17 is only one of many.

That said, there have been several cases of catastrophic failures with Glocks in recent months, all of which have contributed to a severe reduction in sales. If you do a Google Search on Glock Failures, you would get more than a little information with photographs.

Cheers!

[Mark]

Dear Danish,

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will come right out and confess that I am a die-hard colt 45ACP follower, but in addition to all these other tests, I suggest you do a web search using the two terms "glock and kaboom" and see what comes up. I have other thoughts about the Glock designed pistol, but that will bring up a major issue that others have with this pistol.

Mark

P.S. Please feel free to visit me here sometime and I'll attempt to win you over to the dark side!

[Risala]

Any fire arm undergoes extensive evaluation before it is inducted into the force,under the most difficult conditions.
This eval period could be from anywhere from a few months to a couple of yrs.

Case in point the INSAS which was inducted in the late 90's, 99 it was in Kargil,was develped in the late 80's,I saw the proto type in mid 89 in ARDE where it was developed.
It took them 10 yrs of exhaustive trials before inducting it into the Services.

Mehul,

There are bound to be failures in all eqpt,but a drop in off the counter sales off a one of model does not really make a diff to Co's like Beretta,Glock,Colt,whose main customers are the Defense Forces around the world.

Sanjay

[mehulkamdar]

Sanjay,

In both Beretta and Glock's case, "were" is a more apt word than "are" as far as the world's armed forces are concerned. Surely, the Italians would continue to buy Berettas and the Austrians may or may not buy Glocks as they have the vastly superior Steyr MA-1s these days.

The US has acceptefd that they bought the Beretta 9mm only because the Italians agreed to let them station their nukes there during the cold war years if they did.

Just because a design worked during a trial and it was initially well made does not guarantee that it remains a valid one forever.

Cheers!

[Risala]

Sanjay,


The US has acceptefd that they bought the Beretta 9mm only because the Italians agreed to let them station their nukes there during the cold war years if they did.

Just because a design worked during a trial and it was initially well made does not guarantee that it remains a valid one forever.

Cheers!

Mehul,

If what you say is correct then the Italians sold out cheap,a deal in the cold war era could have got them a lot more than a couple of thousand Berettas.
Our next door neighbour used the Afghan situation to his favour when striking the deal for the F-16's.

WRT design,perhaps the greatest and perhaps the most successful and widely adopted Assault rifle has been the AK 47.The basic design still remains the same,this over the last 50 plus yrs that it has been around.

Besides in the forces around the world hand guns have a very restricted use in any case.

Sanjay

[Mark]

Sanjay,

Military procurement has much more to do with politics than it has to do with functionality.

I suspect that since the Roman times at least, many excellent weapons have been replaced or disqualified because the proper palms were not greased.

[Grumpy]

On the subject of failures it has to be remembered that the Beretta 92 FS passed all the trials prior to adoption by the US armed forces only for many of the early US made pistols to suffer major structural failures - which just goes to show how useless the trials are.
I`m a Glock fan. I`m a 1911 fan. I`m a .45 ACP fan. If you must have a standard pistol in .45 ACP and the choice is between a 1911 and a Glock 21 then I`d have the Glock every time - it`s more accurate, has less perceived recoil, is more reliable. has better ergonomics and DOESN`T give you hammer bite. I`ve had standard 1911A1s and I`ve had hammer bite ........ and "once bitten, twice shy" as they say. Hammer bite is excruciatingly painful and if you have any amount of web between your thumb and first finger a standard 1911 will bite you eventually.
Fit a 1911A1 with an extended beavertail grip safety, a straight magazine housing and relieve the frame under the trigger guard and the pistol is transformed : It can no longer bite you and the higher grip allowed negates a surprising amount of recoil.
Happily most 1911s now sold are extensively modified compared to the basic 1911A1 and are superb shooting instruments - and yes, I`d have one in preference to a Glock 21. The alternative would be a new design large frame pistol in .45 ACP which incorporates the beneficial features such as the CZ97B that I`ve only just learnt about from Mehul.......it does look remarkably like the Tans I was using 12 years ago though.
I know and understand Marks reservations re the Glock. In practise I never found them to be at all problematical.

[Grumpy]

The Political shenanigans involved in the adoption of the 9mm Beretta 92FS by the US armed forces was an absolute disgrace and led to the adoption of an inferior round in pistol that wasn`t needed.

"If what you say is correct then the Italians sold out cheap,a deal in the cold war era could have got them a lot more than a couple of thousand Berettas."

A couple of thousand ? You have got to be joking ! A couple of thousand represents much less than 1% of the actual numbers of pistols supplied to the US military. The contract made Beretta - who now a major player on the world small arms stage.

[mehulkamdar]

Sanjay,

I do think that you need to stop equating purchases of pistols by the Indian Army with those by the USA. The US is not a country where the purchase of 1000 or even 100,000 pistols would make it to the newspapers, like you see in India. FYI the initial order alone for the 92 FS was for more than 390,000 pistols as a single order and there were dozens of subsequent orders given to Beretta since then, as the pistols are certified to have a service life of only 5000 rounds. And, Beretta did not only get an order for the 92 FS, they also got one for manufacturing a significant portion of the Colt M 16 A2s manufactured at the time. Colt themselves went under and were then bought up by an Iraqi businessman, Donald Zilkha who still owns them these days in a rump form. The history of the shenanigans were a disgrace as Grumpy rightly says and the information is available in the public domain. Try getting some information by reading up through past issues of Jane's Defence Review or something similar.

Over here, since virtually all mechanical repeaters and semi auto firearms are available over the counter to someone who wants to buy them, the kind of brand fixation that exists in markets like India which are basically product and experience deprived does not exist. If something does not work or if a company screws up, you will hear about it sooner or later. In Glock's case, the message has, indeed, gone all the way to Gaston Glock himself considering that they have suffered a decline of probably as much as 60% in sales.


Grumpy/Mark,

Didn't the Beretta 92 also suffer from frame failures forcing them to bring out a model with a reinforcement that they had to address with an extensive redesign ?

[eljefe]

Mark,I'm coming over for a recap to the dark side.I love the 45 ACP and the old war horse 1911.
tried the Glock in 9 only and never had a hassle-there were only paper bandits gunning for me-no real life 'situations'
I have been bitten by the hammer-with more than one handgun-forced me to change my grip very fast and very forcefully.
Fortunately, all the experience with 1911's was with extended beaver tail.
Heard a few grumbles about the wonder gun Glock,a few years ago. I think the magazine was also falling off and after market steel mags were getting popular?
But , then again, a DECLARED life of 5000 rounds in India would mean atleast 25 years of service...I wonder how the SF/ NSG types are handling their service life limitations for the Glock and M92? Last i read, the torture tests were in excess of 20,000 rounds for the Glock.May be they were just that-torture tests?
I heard about teh CZ 45 and visited their site too. With my limited experience of a CZ (in 9mm,overseas) i am sure the CZ is a robust platform for an evergreen cartridge.
Best
Axx

[Mark]

Mehul,

Yes you are correct, the 92 had a cracking issue, but I thought it was slide that would crack, and the redesign just had a thicker slide, but I may be wrong as it has been a while!

Asif,

What you need to do is visit here and cast a couple hundred 200 grain lead slugs with me, and then we'll load up a couple hundred rounds of 45 on my Dillon reloader that you can shoot off in an afternoon.

Oh yeah, we can go fishing afterwards

[Risala]

Mehul,
Have not drawn any parallels bet Ind Army and xyz
All that has been said is that for any manufacturer the biggest market would be the law enforcement agencies and the forces the world over, where before adoption there would be extensive trials.
Unless the negative feedback comes from those quarters,and orders cancelled it would not really make a diff to the manufacturer. definitely not if the feed back was from folks who purchased across the counter.

And yes today across the board India is perhaps one of the biggest markets for military hardware,though the handgun component might be negligible in that list.

Doc,
Shooting,reloading then shooting again followed by fishing all in a day or two,you dont want to miss that.
Mark you forgot the Guinness.

Cheers

Sanjay

[mehulkamdar]

Sanjay,

Speaking of budgets, India's 2004-1005 was US$ 17.38 billion. The UK which is a much smaller country, spent the equivalent of $ 38.4 billion in 2002, their 2004 figures should be much higher due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. South Korea, which is the size of the average Indian state, spent a little more than $ 16 billion in 2004. Calculate the salaries paid to Indian Army personnel and the amounts spent on equipment etc are paltry - the exact reason why they end up with crap that is not worth anything other than the scrap heap. And, yes, check some of the figures out at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... ending.htm

As far as declining sales reflecting quality problems are concerned, I did mention Glock's losing something like 60% of their sales in the US last year. I do agree with you that there was a reason for this - IIRC that that was the reason that I spoke about earlier.

Mark,

Thanks for the information. I talked to our mutual friend's son in law in Wisconsin late last night and he seemed to think that the Taurus licensed copies of the 92 FS were better as they did not have the problem that the Berettas themselves had.

Asif,

Come over. The only problem is that once you visit MArk's place, you won;t want to go back.

Sorry for going OT but this year, Mark plans to hunt with something VERY special. I shall let him give you guys the details. We talked briefly about it a few days ago.

Cheers!

[eljefe]

Whoah, Mark is a blue wonder dillon fan-so 200 should be a snap...The dark side beckons-and I love temptation...There wouldnt be a vacancy for an emt-P in your town , would there Mark? I guess I can manage that...

Yup, Sanjay, as quoted earlier, since roman times, arms procurement and quality do not go synonymously.
remember the 2000USD coffin story during Kargil?
As an ex lifer, you should have been on the sharp end many a time?
Mark-am casing a bank around the block...
So whats the take on the after market steel mags for the Anton's favourite?
I did hear nice things about his knife though...