The Ministry of the Interior bought 9,216 ‘low-cost’ pistols in October 2020 called Ramón; a controversial purchase if ever there was one.
These pistols, modelled on a Glock’ 19, are made by a completely unknown company within the ambit of the world’s police forces; the Israeli company, Emm.
The quality is reportedly rubbish.
The ones that have already entered service are already causing problems because the cartridges have to be underpowered in order not to cause jamming. In other words, all the standard ammunition 9×19, is no good.
The first units to receive them are elite ones: Command Citizen Security Units (USECIC) and the Reserve and Security Groups (GRS). They are far from happy about this apparent cheap skating by the civilians.
With the testing so far, out of every 35 pistols, 20 have problems. Compare this with the good, old 9mm Beretta that has been the service sidearm until now, which throws up two defective pistols for every 1,200 units. The Guardia Civil rank and file are not impressed.
Furthermore, some pistols are showing fissures after only 100 rounds fired but the main problem is the extractor mechanism that gives no end of problems. Consequently, the Ministry of the Interior has order the extractor mechanism to be changed on all of them, regardless of whether they have entered service or not. The Israeli company is sending replacement parts.
The Ministry now claims that they all work perfectly, which is far from the truth. The Head of the Guardia Civil says that after the modification one out of every 1,000 shots fired cause jamming, which is satisfactory but the police who have to use them claim that this is not the case and that two out of 20 shots jam; i.e. 10%. At least two area HQs have ordered their Ramón pistols to be returned to the factory.
Those civilian bureaucrats in charge of arming the Guardia Civil insist that the Ramón is reliable and that it had no trouble passing the tests and that, had they not selected it, they would have entered into ‘abuse of authority,’ as their bid was the cheapest offer.
The evaluation of the bids, in itself, is very controversial because 60% of the evaluation points were awarded on price alone, whereas safety was only 10% and handling/ergonomics was only 5%. In other words, the evaluation of bids was based mainly on whether the weapons were cheap or not.
The Israeli company entered a bid 30% below the price stipulated by the contract terms. The price put forward was just under three million, working out at 269 euros per pistol before taxes, which also included within that price an anti-theft holster worth 50 euros each. Just about all experts in arms market concur that not one European institution or in any other Western county would contemplate buying police sidearms at such a cheap price.
In fact, it is illegal to buy these pistols in the USA or France because they are a cheap rip off of the Glock 9 and because of the much lowered quality of the weapon in order to sell cheaply.
The amazing thing was that the Ministry of the Interior would not allow the Austrian company that manufactures the authentic Glock to enter the bidding, even though the price per unit was only 36 euros more expensive than the Ramón.
The leader of the unofficial Guardia Civil union, asks a very pertinent question: how is it that the Israeli Army (IDF) uses Glock 17s and 19s and not the Ramón? It’s a rhetorical question.
(News: Spain)