Smith & Wesson Attracts Votes to Kill Beretta Army Contract

In a raucous shoot-out before the House Appropriations Committee, two Massachusetts congressmen touting the Bay State-made Smith & Wesson on Thursday blew away the Army’s $75-million handgun contract with the Italian Beretta company.

Despite vigorous protests from the Pentagon, the panel voted 24 to 12 to order the Army to reopen the competition in which Beretta’s 9-millimeter pistol was picked last year as the standard firearm for all U.S. armed services.

The appropriations amendment, sponsored by Reps. Edward P. Boland (D-Mass.) and Silvio O. Conte (R-Mass.), would give Smith & Wesson another shot at a contract it has already lost three times--once in the Army’s procurement competition and twice in legal challenges that were rejected by the courts.

The vote was immediately denounced by Beretta’s defenders as an unusually brazen example of political bushwhacking of the military’s procurement process.

Pledges Continued Fight

“We can fight this on the floor, we can fight this in rules, we can fight this in the Senate, we can fight this on the beaches, we can fight this on the streets,” said Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), whose Prince George’s County district includes Beretta’s U.S. assembly plant at Accokeek.

The Army was similarly defiant. “It’s real clear to me--and I’m in the infantry--that I’m not going to enter a Smith & Wesson into the U.S. Army,” said Army spokesman Maj. Philip Soucy.

Eight-Year Battle

Thursday’s development was the biggest victory yet for Smith & Wesson and other U.S. gun manufacturers in a long-running battle that began nearly eight years ago when the Army decided to replace the venerable Colt .45 with a new standard 9-millimeter handgun. Eight firms bid for the high-prestige award, and after a series of hotly disputed test results, Beretta won what a company spokesman hailed as “the major pistol contract of the century.”