B&T Universal Service Weapon - USW-A1 9 mm

​B&T USA recently promised me they’d shortly be taking receipt of a few units of the new USW -A1. Here’s what the B&T website has to say of the task and purpose behind this promising new weapon: "In order to react to the quickly changing threats faced by police forces all over Europe, especially those threats presented by Islamic terrorist, law enforcement needs to quickly rethink its armament. The recent terroristic attacks have proven, today’s police side arms are not able to cope with an opponent armed with military assault rifles and bomb vests. This is the main reason for the development of the Universal Service Weapon (USW). It was to designed to be a weapon which enables the first responder, thus the normal patrol officer, to intervene effectively in the event of a terrorist event. It is also a sidearm that is suitable for every kind of “normal” police work. The USW will be available in two versions. One with a DA/SA trigger, available in Spring 2017 and one with a preset striker available Winter 2017." 

​As someone who has a particular penchant for SBR’s fashioned from pistols (as opposed to simply adding a shorter barrel to a rifle), this looks like the ultimate firearm. It is at once a 9mm pistol and then a carbine at the flip of a stock. Short barrels are inherently accurate however the difficulty with a pistol is holding it and keeping it on target, under stress, for every shot - add a stock and it’s a whole different weapon. The USW is threaded for a silencer, it’ll have the (sadly) now rare SA/DA option and it has a safety/decocker. It also has a rearward-set and solid unmoving mount for your favorite reflex site - no matter how shock-proof they say modern sights are on an MOS mount, it doesn’t convince me that one day they would’t fail or shake loose right when you needed it. The USW is vaguely reminiscent of an older Polish design called the PM-63 RAK. Both are slim and built as diminutive as feasible whilst still shooting an eminently effective round; add the possibility of placing shots quickly, quietly and ON target and you have the quintessence of firearm evolution.

I suspect the USW will be fairly scarce and very expensive when it does finally reach US shores, so this is a prompt to an American manufacturer to take a cue and come up with an affordable equivalent: it’ll sell like donuts! ED

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