A History of the HK USP

welcome to small armed solutions today we're gonna take a look at probably one of my all-time favorite handguns the HK USP you know although the USP has been around since the early 1990s I think it's still one of the most significant pistols in the industry probably start to start we have to go back prior to the 1970s 80s H&K was mostly known for their rifles machine guns and whatnot pistols they were not as well known however they did pioneer some pretty good ones especially when it came to polymer pistols they were the ones to polymer to pioneer the polymer frame with the vp70 back back in the most of it in the 70s that was the first but the gun really failed due to the fact that it had a staple gun like trigger from there they went on to create like the P 7 P 7 m 8 series squeeze shockers but the HK pistols were way out of the price range of your average person certainly out of the range of most law enforcement it you know well over a thousand to two thousand dollars in that area in there so probably around 1989 H&K conducted a study and they commenced looking at or commenced the development process of a new family of pistols the goal was to actually to create a pistol that would be able to compete with the Berettas the SIG's the Glocks and so forth I'm gonn price as well as offer a new level of durability and reliability at the same time when this started in the late 80s early 1990s another program came out it was the from SOCOM it was the ohw S or offensive handgun weapon system this program was sort of simultaneously along with the development of the USP when you look at the two pistols there's a lot of similarities the OE WS were the SOCOM pistol was a joint operations with SOCOM it was to create their first handgun specifically for socom special operations due to the fact that they probably had dozens of different guns in there their inventory you know maintenance was a nightmare trying to maintain the components and also it was the first time that SOCOM as a whole was to conduct its own weapons platform program so actually was also sort of an experiment to see how all branches could work together to create the most modern name done in existence that they would all use so to start with we were talking about more about the USP itself USPS Universal self-loading pistol and it had a lot of really really good features on it one of the most interesting aspects I find of it was one of the thresholds was to have a pistol that was under $600 and I can recall for like 550 when they pistols first came out 93 95 I had bought in both a USP 40 and a USP 9 for like 550 and the HK USP 45 was around the same price when it came out as well I actually bought all three I was very very impressed with the design to start off with the USP 40 one of the most important things to bring out is it was one of the first of two handguns that was actually designed around the 40 S&W cartridge oddly enough when the 40 S&W first came out it was a joint effort between Smith & Wesson and Winchester and even more interestingly was the first pistols that actually came out were the Glock in the Smith & Wesson pistols well interestingly they actually were designed 9-millimeter pistols that were just sort of scaled up a little bit to take the 40 S&W cartridge the pressure than the 40 SW cartridge are significantly more significant more aware in the handguns then those two guns are really designed for however the Glock has gone on to do have a incredible durability and reliability but the first true pistols that were designed from the ground up as a 40 was the USP 40 and a six-hour bottle p229 the USP pistol is a polymer frame pistol that has many many interesting features and many of these features are also mirrored on the HK mark 23 as well I want to go over first out of the the HK USP 40 as you can see we have a polymer frame and it has a ambidextrous magazine release that pushes down the magazine itself held 13 rounds it was not part of the Glock 23 first fires magazine capacity these magazines did not swell when they were loaded either so they always would drop free ok the magazines would drop free as you can see it's a typical Browning locking system the slide itself was manufactured from a solid piece of steel the pistol was designed to run a concept of a modular trigger mechanism basically enabling the user to have whatever configuration they would want whether you're a right-handed or left-handed I'm gonna go over that a little bit right now what you see here is is called the variant one this was designed for a right-handed shooter it enables you to have a decock with a manual safety so when you disengage your first shot would be the long double action pull you also been able to engage the safety and haven't cocked and locked or you could be cocked carrying with a safety engaged on the right-handed this is what was referred to as the variant one the variant two did the same thing but it put it on the right hand side the variant three was very much like the Sig model two two six two two eight two two nine where it was a decock only for a right-handed shooter variant four was the same decock only for a left-handed shooter variant four was a double action only with safety very five safety on the left side right side so we can actually go through everything so we could have left hand right side we could have full safety left and right side we can have double action only with him without safety then there was also cocking locked only model and all that can be done by just swapping out the the actual fire mechanism so any company any trained HK armor could change it out to that configuration the barrel is something else it's very very interesting to talk about as well when the original USP first came out it was not the popular HK hammer force rifling it was actually a standard cut landing or rifling HK got a lot of flack for that because you know this is this was HK straight mark was the polygon right from there one of the first companies to really do that on a large scale so due to popular demand HK switch that out to a polygon barrel now myself the first officials I bought one when they first came out and they actually had the standard cut landing groove rifling and I actually did trade in both of mine and I got the ones with the with the polygon rifling I you know I'm I don't shoot LED bullets and I definitely see the benefits of the polygon rifling so I wanted my two pistols to actually have the polygon rifling in them and to this day these are all polygons rifled they always have been one of the most unique design features on this pistol is its recoil reduction mechanism and we're gonna do is we're going to disassemble the pistol so we can take a look at that disassembly is very easy pull the slide back until it lines up with the notch on the slide stop push that out lifts right out slide goes right off the front and then you have the recoil reduction mechanism there take a close look at this taking a look here this is the actual recoil reduction mechanism on the first production pistols the outer recoil spring was not captive then they changed it to a captive mechanism if you take a close look at here you'll see there's two springs you have the outer spring then you have an internal spring this with what this does is when it fits into the pistol like so is the slide compresses on to the standard recoil spring the slide will come about this point right here then it will compress this much stronger spring it does a couple of things first of all it absorbs the shock out of the frame so the frame is not taking the the same kind of a of a shock that a stable a steel or an alloy frame would take so it's taking stress off of the pistol during recoil the second thing it does is when you're using high-pressure animation such as plus P and plus P plus ammunition it has absolutely no effect on the pistol whatsoever for durability that same ammunition you put into a regular steel or alloy frame you actually get a dam and it's gonna eventually damage the frame it's gonna cause it to wear significantly faster your thing that it does is actually takes up some of the felt recoil because again that second spring isn't going to be absorbing some of that recoil this is actually a patented mechanism it is very very effective it enables the HK USP there's something they probably only the Glock at the time could do was to be able to fire a steady diet of high pressure plus P and plus P plus a nation on a regular basis without it actually having any adverse effects on the pistol whatsoever some of the newer generation HK pistols you know they they don't use this to compact pistols they don't use the same system but this this reduction because it actually came out of the mark 23 so compass on which we're gonna take a look at in a few minutes as you can see from the inside of the frame you have your rails that are actually in you know they're molded into the the polymer frame itself it's a very durable polymer frame this actually is one of the newer ones which actually says HK sidearms GmbH USP on both sides we're going to take a quick look at some of the other markings from some of the earlier pistols versus the later ones in a few minutes the actual slide itself the barrel pops right out this is a really good excellent finish it has a anti-corrosion finish on it it's pretty durable isn't wear off like a lot of the other ones do this particular one has night sights on it you can put whatever you'd like on it you can also see these roll pins are actually nickel nickel plated which also will you know a tin on and corrosion resistance like any other HK pistols you have your date codes BC will be a date code and you have your two proof marks from the proof houses in Germany your serial number if you also notice that there is a prefix on here 22 22 refers to 40 S&W if we look over here 25 refers to 45 Auto mark 23 pistol 23 would be the prefix on the mark 23 series then we go over here and we'll see 24 which would be on the 9-millimeter series so each caliber will have its own unique prefix on it identify what caliber the pistol was you'll also see a de on some of these two which means fully German made as well which I actually have on the two the two later production pistols now if we take a look at these pistols here you can see the top was a early production I probably would say mid-90s to late 90s you can also see how the HK is engraved HK USP is all engraved or if you compare it to the newer one you'll see a laser engraved HK and then the USP on there the other thing we're taking a look at is the actual molding market the marks in the back the original HK USP s-- had HK USP then when we flipped it over we actually would have the u.s. patent number the current ones is USP then we flip it over as USP as well and will also notice where it says Heckler and Koch GmbH made in Germany on the original pistols and the current production will see sidearms made in Germany the barrels themselves are serialized the externalization on the barrel the frame and the slide same over here you'll have HK caliber serial number as well as the German proof mark this was my my second USP 9 which actually has the hammer forged Barrel in it as well polygon the one right before this one this was one of the first ones actually came in that was a polygon barrel I snatched it up as soon as it came in so this was right at the time when they actually made this switch over you also see we have a variant two versus a variant one both in nine-millimeter now we're going to take a look at the mark 23 this is probably of a handgun in the world the most tested handgun in the world this was the pistol that was created simultaneously with the USP 40 oddly enough this was a 45 auto caliber pistol the 45 caliber USP didn't come you know Becca come on to like 96 it was a the third of the series to actually come out now we can see that there are some similarities and definitely we'll see there's some changes between USP than the mark 23 I'm gonna reassemble this right now so we can take a little closer look at them side-by-side the ohw s program are the effects of hanging on weapon system has a very specific requirements one of those requirements were it was to have a separate decocking lever so you cocked back by pushing downward it would it would d [ __ ] also it wanted have you the ability to carry cocked and locked the USP actually was developed so it would have safety decock all in one lever but that was one of the requirements also on the rail in the front here this was pre 1913 rail so this was actually a universal mounting room which hhk called it which had on both this was actually part of the offensive Hangul weapon system was a laser aiming module that went on to the universal rail it would have visible visible IR and I'll have it would have visible visible laser with flashlights and without flashlight without Laser see we're able to adjust your settings from here looking at the slide itself this is something that's definitely worth bringing up because this particular pistol here very low serial number off five to eight this pistol was one the absolute first pistols that was sold on the commercial market and this was also manufactured at the time when the pistols were being made for SOCOM so the actual finish on here is the real SOCOM finish this is not the standard HK finish you if you see it it seems like it's more of a black lacquered finish this actually came with a yellow card that stated this particular finish was not for aesthetics this was designed for maximum anti-corrosion for being on a seals hip in the middle of the salty ocean it is a black lacquer type finish when you compare it to this finish down here which is basically it looks a little looks like a missile deployment looks like a regular black matte finish now after HK stopped producing the guns was for SOCOM they did continue making these pistols for the commercial market this was one of the things that they ended up doing away with and going to the standard finish which was something that you know I must say it makes it this little of a lesser value but in my mind I tend to like the original itself they had the original finish you also notice it has a threaded barrel at the end another thing that's unique this pistol has if you can see in there this is a polygon barrel chrome-plated you see the chroman right in there this was done at request of SOCOM you will not find that on any of the current production mark 23s it appears as soon as the contract was done HK went to the standard barrel process which was not chrome plating so pretty much any of the newer mark 23 is you're gonna see will not have that chrome plated barrel looking at the right side so you could definitely see that there was lineage between these two but you could definitely see that the mark 23 and its own set of requirements that was quite different from the head of the USP you'll notice that you know you have a much larger trigger guard for use with heavy gloves from the from the slide you'll also notice that the sights - the sites are much higher profile on the mark 23 the reason being is it was designed as an offensive handgun weapons system that system composed of a pistol a laser a marginal and a sound suppressor this enabled you to be able to fire the mark 23 with the sound suppressor and be able to use the sights slide snaps are the exact same and you'll also notice that all of the roll pins on the top you can see that they are all nickel-plated which again was very important for corrosion resistance when the pistols went into saltwater now looking on the inside of the pistol the pistol would just assemble the exact same way you will see the same kind of a recoil reduction mechanism however it is much much beefier the ohw s was also required to fire two different types of ammunition it was required to fire the standard m1911 bolts wearing thirty green subsonic but it was also supposed to fire the 185 green plus P and the 185 grain plus P was a killer of 1911 it was to higher pressure it was causing the guns to come apart due to this recoil reduction mechanism in this pistol in its use of a polymer frame this would fire a steady diet of the 185 green plus P cartridges with no damage to the pistol whatsoever this pistol went through over 85 thousand rounds at minimum during its testing this pistol was tested in every every kind of environment you can imagine you know sub a sub Arctic extreme high temperature human environment it went through all the salt water test this pistol without a doubt it was the most tested pistol in the world nothing ever went through it was grueling of the test assist and it still maintained incredible groups at 25 yards as a match great pistol wood looking in the inside of the frame here you will also notice the firing pin block safety which is most of the pistols looking inside of here you can see all of the components have that nickel-plated type finish on it for corrosion resistance again this was a difficut requirement that was put out so when it is on the hip of a seal in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean Pacific Ocean the pistol will not rust a seal would have no problem lifting this pistol up out of the water and firing it with her was where the barrel was full of water or not without any issue whatsoever slide back on now is awesome as this pistol was the program was somewhat of a failure and the reason that was a failure had absolutely nothing to do with this pistol this pistol was an absolute awesome pistol it did everything that it was supposed to do and then some it exceeded the specifications that it was mandated the problem with it was the side even though this was designed to be an offensive weapon which means a complete weapon system a primary weapon the seals that were using it or special operations guys that were using it couldn't get over the size and the weight compared to the stick to two sixes of the Brenna's that they had been carrying the the smaller pistols were much easier to manipulate to maneuver and unfortunately these pistols found themselves sitting in the arms rooms and the seals were taking a special-operations guys were taking these smaller pistols so what really hurt this pistol was not what it was it was the people who were using them really couldn't grasp what the pistol was for that it was an internally offensive handgun it was not designed to be a sidearm like the like the beretta or these state pistols several years later HK came out with a new pistol it was called the USP 45 tactical this found its way into the military hands in SOCOM this basically had the same features which would include the threaded barrel and both pistols head you can see this remember o ring and the Burroughs basically insured the slide to barrel fit sealed the same way every time for accuracy these dead about the exact same thing it didn't have this quote on decocker which was not really silent a I had the same kind of mechanism it had the same recoil reduction mechanism it also had match-grade sites that were actually even a little bit better than what we had on the HTM Arc 23 but this was the size of a city 2 to 6 it was the size of a Beretta the guys were much more apt to to actually carry it so basically you had the benefits of this pistol here in a smaller package so that really was what the failure of the mark 23 was and again I can't stress more that it was not because of anything that the pistol was this still even to this day even though this was made in 92 still one of the most advanced pistols I think in the world it has features on them advanced features that nobody else has the recoil reduction mechanism there's no other pistol in the world that has that it's patented and I don't believe anybody has come out with since a system that reduces recoil and that enables a pistol to take this kind of a diet of very high pressure punishing ammunition on any other pistol so we're going to take a look now it's sort of the evolution of the pistols and then they're different different calibers and and see just the path of the pistol have taken its previously stated this the first pistol was the HK USP 40 which was designed for it within a year later the HK USP 9mm meter came out basically the nine-millimeter was a scaled-down version of the US be 40 and we're gonna take a look at that right now by taking epistles a partner and you take a look at the slides the frames were the same the difference was was gonna slide in the barrel [Music] now looking at the top USP 40 is right here this is the USP 9 the same slide was used but you can see the amount of material that was taken out of here to lighten it up so would function properly with the 9-millimeter ammunition this slide would have been way too heavy to work with the nine-millimeter and the reason why I really want to show this is again reiterating the fact that the USP 40 was originally designed as a 40 caliber pistol and then it was scaled down to the 9 millimeter and again that's very easily seen by the material that's been removed you'll notice that both pistols actually utilize the RICO action system the USP 9-millimeter would be able to fire the plus P and the plus P plus a nation again on a regular basis with having no ill effect on the front of the frame the slider the recoil mechanism at all the one thing that I've never noticed was when it would be time to replace this recoil spring particularly USP 40 unit 9s that I have had so well in excess of 10,000 rounds each and I've never replaced any of the components in them whatsoever so for as far as what the actual life of the recoil spring mechanism is I really couldn't tell you because I've never never damaged one and I've also never really heard of anybody else having to replace it either looking at the actual frames themselves you can basically see everything is the exact same on the frames you will see there's also a date code on the actual frame of themselves one says oh eight and one says BC this is a variant - this is a variant 1 again variant 1 variant 2 so you can just basically see that the the lovers are on opposite sides once your right hand and once for left-handed you can see that you have this component this component there's only 2 components within the inside that actually are stainless steel or have a plating on it the rest of the parts are in the hostel black so again these don't have that same Navy SEAL or SOCOM type type issues or type issues ora tech components that the mark 23 has but again always remember that the mark 23 is a complete different animal it is designed for a whole new different set of circumstances and the cost is astronomically different as well this will show you the evolution of starting with a 40 S&W and then scaling down to a nine millimeter in may and 1995 HK released their USP 45 series again this is very funny considering that the original USP 40 was developed in conjunction with the US or with the mark 23 SOCOM pistol which was chambered in 45 but there was no question that HK was gonna do a 45 because the USP epistles were designed for the American market and nothing is more American than the 45 ACP so basically what we have here are two of the models the USP standard 45 on the bottom here and then the USB tactical on top first we're going to take a look at the standard USP 45 this again is the same type of a pistol has the same type of recoil reduction mechanism the thing that I want to show you out here is actually what variant it is this is called the dak which is basically a law-enforcement type pistol this is claimed to be double action I tend to think of it more single action myself if you were to watch the hammers I pull the trigger back you'll see how there's no resistance so they goes from what they want to say double action down into a single-action then once you pull the trigger fires slide comes back you release the trigger just stop to hear it click now you remain in the single action mode then for you to release the trigger it goes back in with the hammer fully down so as you pull the trigger back the hammer goes back into a pre cocked position which is set which is a single action and you actually will fire this pistol like a single-action pistol where this really stood out was for law enforcement who didn't like the double single because a lot of times what will happen is with somebody with a pistol it has a double action on the first they'll pull that trigger and they'll pull downward on the shot so the impending gunshot that's low and then with the second shot is that lighter single action so they'll end up shooting high and then by the third shot they're used to where that trigger is gonna be so then their shots are on so what this was designed for was to give the officer or the end user the same shot every time similar to a Glock it's always been one of the selling features of the Glock pistols was was your first shot was the same as your last shot and that increases your accuracy potential so that's really what the DAK was looking at the rest of the pistol everything else is the exact same as you saw with the USP 14 USP 9mm meter these parts are not interchangeable with the slides and frames and whatnot are not interchangeable with the 9 and the 40 because of the fact that this is a larger frame the magazine capacity on these is 12 magazine capacity on the 40 is 13 rounds and on the nine-millimeter is 15 rounds taking a look at the inside the same reduction mechanism the 45s of all the models you really feel the recoil reduction mechanism actually working you can feel when it comes back and you can feel when it when it hits that heavier spring and you can feel that recall of being taken up it's a very unique feel to it as well again this is the slides later because you again you don't have as much power behind a 45 4 stars I'm the pistol in the frame you should do with the 40 S&W these are also the polygon barrels this has been an extremely popular pistol and there's a whole story that you want to give about this pistol - I do have a little story for you regarding the HK USP 45 back around 1996 1997 that time period this year a Chester police department was looking to replace their pistols at the time they were carrying the Beretta 92 compacts they were actually one of the first departments in the country to switch to the beretta pistols they carry the 92 compacts and the 92 centurions the then chief of the firearms training unit his name was Bill Martel he was an avid 45 shooter he believed in the 45 he actually went as far as to get permission from the chief of the police to instead of carrying his 92 caliber 92f compact pistol he actually carried a 1911 and 45 when they were looking into pistols bill saw the USP 45 in fact even found one that had the serial number that had his badge number on it and he was pretty excited over that and he shot this pistol the USP 45 everyone and he absolutely loved it and I believe he wholeheartedly wanted that to be the next issue pistol for the C Rochester Police Department he got the pistol he ran through the tests he absolutely loved it and he went to put it through for the budgetary and sure enough they saw the bill there was no trade ins offered for the beretta compact pistols that they had and epistles were well over 650 bucks apiece and then he had to admin her partner dollars to that for the leather and then you know you had to change over the ammunition and whatnot it was a whole different process the price was just it was too much I mean a police department I think we think really could even consider it because of the cost there was just absolutely no way that they could financially do it which you know bill was pretty much traumatized from that because he really felt this was gonna be the best pistol for the Rochester Police Department so they ended up going back to beretta Bruin offered them an incredible trade-in deal and some other incentives to switch from the 92 compacts and Centurions to the Cougar in 45 caliber however the SWAT team are the emergency Task Force from our our PD did switch over to the USP 45s and they had those pistols for quite some years it wasn't until probably I don't know four or five years ago when the department switched over to the new px4 in 45 there was actually a fighting between the firearms training unit between the M&P 45 and the Beretta 45 px4 px-41 out and at that time the chief of police said he wanted everybody in the department to have the exact same pistol because you had people with 38 snubnose as you had 92 compacts you had any two Centurions and then you had the guys with the px4 or started up with the Cougars in 45 so he wanted every single officer to be equipped with the exact same px4 so the SWAT team was forced to give up their their USB 45s which they were not happy about at all and the px4 actually served a very short period with the both the police department and not being replaced with Glock within a couple years the Glock 21 and the entire department switched over to the Glock 20 ones including the SWAT team but I'm sort of an example of you know a department who really loved the pistol but it was it was just too just too expensive you know one of the other interesting things that came out was during the initial years of the USP you know part of the the lore behind it was for the American public was the MSRP the MSRP being under six hundred dollars and that was in 1994 1995 in those pistols were they were around 550 unfortunately if you look right now the average USP is gonna be about 850 the price went back up from that's from that original goal of under 600 and now they ended up going back up in price so which leads you again to you know agent K's biggest crutch it is their cost most departments unless you are extremely well-funded or you are able to get grants they will not be able to afford you know HK pistols it's a bit to say it's the same same thing with sig you know companies like beretta and Glock Smith & Wesson you know they'll offer trade ins where they'll give you either X amount towards or sometimes even slops or they'll give you discounts on the new leather and whatever the department would need you know agent Kate makes some of the best products in the world but you know the price is just the price is just high you know do you get what you pay for oh absolutely you know you know this pistol was designed in 1994 1995 and I think still to this day it is still state-of-the-art there are no pistols out there that offer I think any of the refinements you know such as the rate collection mechanism and so forth that these do you know there are certainly departments who use them for instance you know the original nine millimeter of USP was adopted as the p8 by the German army so it's been in service with the German army it's in use all over the world by special operations units police units here in the USA there are police departments who have put them in service the USP has sort of fallen by the wayside and a little bit to some of the newer versions that agent case combined with it tend to be a little bit more narrower a little bit lighter you know I I just really like the original USP series you know I like the full-size pistols the compact versions they have are very nice as well 3/4 rupture mechanism to me I think is one of the most significant things that make this pistol what it is and it was only the full-size pistols that actually have that you know I'd like to have that ability to not worry about what ammunition that I'm shooting because you know I do I have all kinds of ammunition I have standard 124 or 115 ring but I do have a lot of plus PA mayshen I do have plus P Plus ammunition it's nice to know that you have a pistol that you can actually just take and put whatever you want in it and it's gonna it's gonna work you know the 40 S&W assisted since its adoption or since its inception there's been a lot of pistols that come apart you know with excessive use of it because again it does it does wear pretty heavy on the on the pistol you know the Glock pistols in each USP pistols they tend to be and all the sig also say two to nine those tend to be three pistols that of all of them stand up the best because they were designed for they were designed for it the polymer frames makes a big difference as well because it absorbs shock when it's light comes back so being able to absorb that shock also increases the service life of the pistol versus any of the aluminum or steel frame pistols I don't see the USP going anywhere and any in the near future I think it's a viable part of evasion case I think it's very valuable part of their product line you know the USP 40 during its development if they went through over 80 thousand rounds without any parts breakages there's very few 40 caliber pistols out there that will do that you know it's got the you know they're these pistols have gone through all the military testing the mud to sand that called the heat the salt spray so you know you are buying a military-grade pistol even though it's for selling the commercial line the you tested in HK did on these pistols was the same and then some of what most military pistols will handle you have a polygon barrel which lasts nearly you know very few people that I've ever known had ever replaced the polygon barrel you don't have those sharp lands and grooves in there that are actually gonna wear you know by having that tighter fit by not having those sharp edges by having two bullets squeezed into it you get a tighter gas seal you get a higher velocity you know a negative part of it not to me but to some you're not gonna use light ammunition in them you need to use a copper jacket projectile or a copper plate or projectile USP 45 tactical is become my favorite of the u.s. piece I actually purchased one of these pistols from H&K a couple years back when I rented the article for small arms of you I'm 45 caliber 18 case since I moved to the great state of Texas here I didn't occupy New York anymore I can actually have stomp suppressors so I have an osprey a 45 caliber Osprey that I put on me a USB tactical here it's awesome because I have my sights I can use my sights and you'll also see a previous video on that pistol you 45 USP tactical with the suppressor you'll see a video on that and it is just the funnest pistol to shoot low recoil and with a sound with a sound suppressor on it's just it's awesome versa far as having all those awesome - awesome features of the mark 23 the accuracy is incredible with the longer barrel as well as having the rubber o-ring in there you also do have a live cartridge indicator the actual extractor will stick out you'll see a little bit of red on there I tend to prefer the variant one myself you also have the adjustable trigger reset the back where you can adjust how much trigger travel that you have on it the trigger does break very crisp and very clean the 45 so the only pistols at HK has their USP series actually use metal magazines the rest of them use the polymer magazines 12-round magazine [Applause] overall these are some of the best pistols I think in the industry are they worth the money it's it's difficult to say if you have the money absolutely if you're working on a budget I mean obviously you can't go there but for the price even for the higher price you're still getting one hell of a of an excellent and advanced pistol you're getting pistols with a tried combat record the USP 45s and the USP 9's these have all seen combat as a standard military pistol as a standard law-enforcement pistol they've seen action all over the world in the nine-millimeter and the 45 configurations the nine-millimeter especially the 9 millimeters probably been the most successful USP just due to its sheer military contracts of you know they're using these over in Denmark as well that was over in Denmark a couple years ago doing some work with Danish army and these guys all had HK USP pistols and they absolutely loved them so yeah they're definitely well worth the money and you're definitely getting one of the highest most advanced quality pistols in the world we're gonna take all these pistols out to the range and put some rounds to them and see how they shoot the gun that started the entire HK USP series of pistols is the USP 40 this was one of two of the first pistols that was designed specifically for the 40 S&W cartridge this particular pistol the 40 S&W USP and the stig p229 this pistol here as it was originally developed was for the 40 caliber it was designed with a proper proper way to the slide proper everything for that this particular one is a variant one you can see from the safety on the left side so you can put the safety up and we have a cocked and locked safety off d [ __ ] so we're having double action trigger or we can put it with the safety engaged this is probably the most popular variant so again variant one fires the 13 rounds of ammunition the magazine this same mission action is provided by Jeff Hoffman at Black Hills it's a 180 degree Full Metal Jacket [Music] [Music] yup Lola makes loading so much easier [Music] [Music] [Music] the second version of the u.s. people that came out was the USP 9-millimeter I'll take a little bit closer of looking this when we do our actual review but you'll be able to tell there's been a lot of material removed to make this compatible with a 9-millimeter this is what's called a variant two if you notice that the safety is on the right side so it's designed for luck so we have decock we have safety engaged we can also have cocked and locked safety off decock we only have one magazine so we're going to load this one a couple times [Music] provided by hopping over Black Hills this is solder 15 great football jacket [Music] [Music] this is the USP 45 this one's actually in a very interesting of elem if you notice we have a bop hammer on here as I pull the trigger back it's extremely like so basically what happens is it's considered double action which I don't know simply as parsing election to me but as you pull it back we're in the cocked position so when you pull the trigger to fire bang comes back then you release the trigger just enough in a remains in single action or if you release the trigger you can go alone no benefit over safe action for instance Nordic Locker the benefit of this would be is a double strike capability so you pull the trigger and the cartridge hitting discharged you can pull it forward again and I have a second strike on it so we're gonna fire a few rounds down to this this is a specifically designed for law enforcement and it but it has been adopted by several as well just takes a little bit of getting used to quite accurate there are many us peas in the HK catalogue however my favorite is the HK USP 45 tactical this is very similar to the USP that you just saw with a couple major differences one this is actually a variant one son of the L am if you notice this has high profile match grade sights it's not PI that's to go along with a threaded barrel that you can attach the suppressor to you also have a match grade trigger this wouldn't has an adjustable trigger reset also you also notice it isn't the rubber o-ring you see right here there's ensures the barrel locks up tight the same way every time again I think this is the best one of the entire lineup they offer these same USB tacticals and also the 9 in the 40 as well [Music] this particular model you can certainly feel the recoil reduction mechanism kick in I've been not following these pistols since they came out in the early 1990s I purchased two of them actually purchased all three of them three Kevin's and three variations including the SOCOM pistol I filed these throughout the years I've shot the hell out of them throughout the years as well so I hope you enjoy this longer video they don't alarm on but there's a lot of really good information I think in here so please click like and please subscribe thank you

Channel: SmallArmsSolutions

Views: 167,122

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Id: a5ZbFh3jW8g

Length: 52min 0sec (3120 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 29 2018