Air Force plans to keep its M18 pistols

The Air Force plans to stick with the M18 pistol as its sidearm, which the service has been issuing to airmen for the past several years, an Air Force spokesperson said.

Made by Sig Sauer, the M18 pistol is a compact variant of the Army’s Modular Handgun System. Since 2017, all the military services have adopted the M18 and the full-sized M17 to replace the M9 pistol, which first entered service in 1985. 

“The Air Force is satisfied with the M18 Modular Handgun System currently employed across the department,” the service spokesperson told Task & Purpose. “We do not plan to consider other handgun options until the current system approaches end of service life. Until then, our limited small-arms procurement budget must remain focused on older and higher priority weapons.”

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Small Arms Program Office has purchased about 125,000 M18 pistols for airmen in combat arms units across the service, a 2020 Air Force news release says.

Airmen began receiving M18 pistols in 2019. Task & Purpose asked the Air Force if it will continue to field the pistol in its seventh year of use as part of ongoing coverage of whether the military services plan to keep or replace their current slate of small arms weapons.

For example, the Army recently told Task & Purpose that it had not purchased any M7 rifles for this fiscal year, and the production line has shifted to the lighter XM8 carbine. The Marine Corps also said it decided not to replace its M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle with the M7.

The Air Force has revalidated the M18’s safety and reliability within the past two years, the service spokesperson said.

In 2025, the Air Force ordered a service-wide inspection of its M18 pistols and the service’s Global Strike Command temporarily stopped using the weapon following the shooting death of an airman assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. The Air Force initially announced that the death was due to an M18 discharge, but another airman was later arrested in connection with the incident and charged with manslaughter and making a false statement.

The head of Global Strike Command, which operates and protects nuclear weapons, initially announced in July 2025 that the command had suspended using M18s “out of an abundance of caution” pending the outcome of investigations into the fatal shooting. The command later announced the following month that it had returned the pistol to service after inspections of nearly 8,000 M18 pistols found that none had misfired.

“As affirmed by the [Air Force Global Strike Command], the M18 was specifically designed and rigorously tested to meet stringent requirements unique to the military,” a Sig Sauer news release from August 2025 says. “The [Air Force Global Strike Command] command-wide inspection showed that no weapon discharges were attributed to a malfunction, and the M18 can safely and reliably accomplish their missions across the globe.”

The M18 is a military version of Sig Sauer’s P-320 series pistols. The weapon is 7.25 inches long and has a 3.9-inch barrel, compared with the full-sized M17, which is 8.05 inches long and features a 4.7-inch barrel, according to the Army. Both weapons fire 9mm rounds and can be equipped with 17- and 21-round magazines and have a range of up to 50 meters. 

The Air Force spokesperson said the service does not use the M17.

In January 2017, Sig Sauer was awarded the Modular Handgun System contract to deliver a total of 480,000 of both the M17 and M18 pistols over a 10-year period, according to the company. The striker-fired pistols feature night sights, removable night sight rear plates, and manual safeties.

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