Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at the new pistol from HS Produkt
being released by Springfield Armoury.
This is finally for once not a "HellSomething",
this is the Springfield Echelon made by HS Produkt in Karlovac, Croatia.
Now I recently spent some time over in Karlovac
and some other places in Croatia doing some filming,
and we actually got a look at a few of the parts being made for these.
And our tour guides were very quick to point out like,
"Oh no, no, no, no, don't look at that, you're not allowed to see that,
that's embargoed until sometime in the future date," which is in fact today.
So a big thanks to Bear Arms of Scottsdale, Arizona,
for hooking us up with this one that we could get a video in
for the official embargo release date.
Now you are probably wondering, "OK, it's the replacement for the Springfield XD.
Who cares, what's the big deal? It looks like a plastic striker-fired Glock knock-off, right?"
Well, if we're going to be strictly accurate here,
it's a plastic striker-fired SIG knock-off, but with some improvements.
So the whole reason that HS Produkt developed this new pistol
was to go to a chassis platform, and to get away from their grip safety.
Essentially the XD, which was the HS2000
and then the HS-9, it was originally this pistol in Croatia.
It was a major advance for HS Produkt at the time, it was their first polymer-framed gun.
It was a step up in quality from their previous production guns.
And it fit the times really well, but it has now become a bit obsolete.
So HS Produkt is now trying to fill military and police tenders
for sidearms and what they found is nobody wants the grip safety.
It is a point of failure on the XD/HS2000/HS-9 guns,
and they needed to do something a little bit different.
Now on the one hand they could have simply removed the grip safety, kept the same basic gun.
But they wanted to make something that was going to be
fundamentally more forward-looking and give them more flexibility going into the future.
And so what they did was take the chassis concept
that was really ... in a practical matter pioneered by SIG
and has started to be adopted by other countries as well.
Where instead of the plastic grip module being the official frame of the gun,
the frame of the gun is just the little metal chassis inside that holds the fire control parts.
And this does a couple of really important things,
particularly for a pistol that's made outside the US.
Primarily what it does is allow them to avoid a lot of importation problems.
So you may wonder why haven't any of these foreign-based companies
been releasing pistols to compete with the SIG P365, the ... high-capacity sub-compact.
It's a hugely popular style of pistol in the US right now, but we don't see one from HK,
we don't see one from Walther, we don't see one from Beretta.
And the reason that we don't is those pistols are too small to be legally imported into the US.
In ... 1968 ... elements around the Gun Control Act
included a prohibition on importation of pistols that didn't meet certain size, weight
and safety and target shooting, basically sporting purpose definitions.
And ... the short version of this is if the gun is too small, you can't import it.
Well, you can still import that little chassis in a non-gun configuration.
Or you can import it in this configuration and then now swap out the slide,
swap out the grip assembly just like you can on a SIG P320 or P365,
and have a virtually infinite number of configurations available very easily.
So that's what HS Produkt is going with.
Now previous HS guns have all had a Croatian designation
and then a US Springfield import designation.
The HS2000 became the XD, the HS-9 is the XD-M, sort of.
The Springfield Hellcat is the HS11.
And it's funny that there is an issue that they run into in Europe,
where people assume that the gun
(it's kind of a universal grass is greener on the other side of the fence sort of thing)
where people assume that the gun that's provided to the other place
is better than the one they can get right there.
So they get Europeans who are like, "Oh, I want to buy an XD-M."
And they hand them an HS-9 they go, "But this says HS-9, this doesn't say XD-M. I want the good one."
And then of course if there were HS-9s available in any way in the US,
you would have the same thing happening here, people going, "Oh, I don't want that
cheapy import version XD, I want the proper HS-9."
Well in truth, they are in fact the same pistol.
And they finally solved that issue here on the Echelon by only having one name.
So in Croatia it's the Echelon, and in the US under Springfield importation, it's the Echelon.
So let's take a closer look at it, let me show you what they've done.
... I think it has a couple of little improvements over the way SIG does this chassis system.
Alright, from the outside pretty typical-looking here,
we've got all the standard features you would expect.
The nice thing here is it really does have all the ones you would expect.
So it's pre-cut for an optic, and in fact
the accessories that it comes with include two sets of mounting screws.
So one of them is for a DeltaPoint or EFLX. One is for the Shield.
And then pin set 1 is already in the gun, and I think that's an RMR but I'm not sure.
For iron sights on this one we have a tritium front sight.
And it's just dovetailed in, so easily changeable if you want to go get something else.
And we have a big U-notch rear sight.
Again, dovetailed in so if you want something else, easy to swap it out.
If you want to put on an optic and replace these with suppressor height sights, easy to do.
The controls are all ambidextrous, we have an ambi mag release here.
These by the way, are not interchangeable with XD magazines,
they look fairly similar but not the same, they had to relocate the magazine catch slightly.
So the standard mag is 17 rounds, double stack, single feed, pretty typical.
The gun comes with a second one that has a +2 extension base plate on it.
And then it actually also comes with a second +2 extension.
... And it has a regular floor plate in here somewhere.
So you can set these up both as 19s or both as 17s, or one of each, whatever you want.
While we're in there, it comes with a little simple moulded plastic magazine loading tool.
The slide release is also ambidextrous.
And quite small, so this isn't going to get snagged on anything, it's not going to catch on anything.
I kind of like that, it's there if you need it but it's unobtrusive.
There is no manual safety, we have the typical trigger safety right there.
If you don't pull that in, the trigger won't press.
A quick look at the markings here. We have Springfield Armoury on the side.
We have a serial number on the barrel, and that is the serial number on the chassis inside.
So that's a hole in the plastic. Unlike most polymer pistols that we're used to,
there is no embedded metal plate in the grip frame anywhere
because the grip frame is not legally the firearm.
On this side we have the name Echelon.
You'll notice there is no "Grip Zone" anywhere on it, thank you, finally.
There is some nice subtle, but effective, ... texturing on the gun.
And they include that in a bunch of other places.
You've got a nice finger rest up here that is textured, that's kind of cool.
Obviously we have a rail for an accessory light.
And then I'm kind of proud of HS about this,
they went and put the Springfield Armoury logo on top of the slide,
but this time it says Springfield Armoury and it also says HS Produkt, Karlovac, Croatia.
So the company is getting big enough that they are clearly able to
set some of the parameters in the import contracts.
It's not quite the one-way street that it used to be with Springfield and HS.
Disassembly is going to be pretty much what you would expect.
I'll note that we have some really good, chunky, grip texturing
on the front of the slide, that's convenient for this.
So I'm going to lock it open, I am then going to (stop me if you've seen this procedure before)
I'm going to take the disassembly lever, rotate it 90 degrees down.
And then release the slide, and it comes forward and drops right off the gun.
This is unfired, we'll be taking this out and doing some shooting with it in the coming weeks.
But for now un-fired. Captive recoil spring, barrel.
I mean this is all very standard modern pistol stuff.
We've got our striker, we've got our striker safety right there.
Unless that's pushed up, the striker can't go all the way forward.
Now the more interesting part here. In order to take the chassis out,
we're going to pull the lever out, that just slides off.
There we go, that comes out.
If we compare this to a SIG 320, on the SIG once you've got to this step
you just lift the front and pull the trigger ... and the chassis comes out.
So it's sort of this lift up and out it comes.
Now HS did things a little bit differently here,
because you can see that little pin, that's moulded into the frame.
And there's an oval hole that it's sitting in, an oval hole in the chassis.
What ... HS has done is you have to push
this chassis forward before you can lift it out of the gun.
There are actually lips on the front here at the top and at the bottom that hold it in position.
So it's held quite stably there in the ... grip assembly.
So what I'm going to do is lift up ... on the slide stop,
and I can slide the whole chassis forward.
Then pull the trigger, that lets me get it the rest of the way forward.
And then, ... there we go, lift it out of the gun.
So the grip module here is just moulded plastic with a magazine catch in it.
It does also by the way, have interchangeable back straps on it.
So I've got the large one in here right now, it comes with a large, a medium and a small.
And you can see it reflected right there, there's a little button.
All I have to do to change them is reach inside the grip, push that button,
and then the grip back strap slides right off. It's got a metal pin to lock it in place.
And then that little plastic tab snaps in there.
So that's your grip module, and that I'm sure they will have more versions of.
So you can pretty clearly see the similarities here, this is the chassis system
and there's not a whole lot that you can do to change it.
The things that I like about the HS iteration of this are, again, these locking tabs
on the top and the bottom that hold this nice and securely in position in the frame.
And I kind of like the fact that there's a little less going on with the HS one.
Now of course the SIG here has a manual safety and that's going to add a few components to it.
But if we look at the back, HS has managed to put all of the parts
like more securely inside the chassis, there's less hanging off, like this spring on the SIG.
So it's hard to fault SIG for this, they were absolutely a pioneer in doing this sort of thing.
But what's cool is, and this is how technology works,
one company starts it, and then people see what they did and come up with ways
to make it simpler and more efficient and better.
And I think HS is certainly on the right track here.
So we've got a sear, drops down out of the way, releases the striker.
We've got our ejector back here, you've got your slide stop and all the other components.
For now there are only really two versions of the pistol available.
There is the standard configuration like this, and then there's also
a slightly extended threaded barrel available.
I don't know if they actually have complete threaded barrel pistols available at this moment,
they do have the SKUs for them, you can get the threaded barrel itself.
They are only available in 9mm, but the whole point of this chassis system
is that many other options are almost certainly coming.
I don't have any inside knowledge from HS or from Springfield here,
but I would be absolutely shocked if they didn't expand this line to include a compact, a sub-compact.
I have to think that one of the big things on the plan for this system, this pistol chassis,
is a direct competitor to the P365 because that gun has proven so popular.
And then on the other side a larger competition model,
something that has a compensator, longer slide, longer grips, shorter grips.
It'd be really cool if they did a stocked pistol version, something like the USW, although probably not.
In theory, they could very easily release this in .40 Smith & Wesson.
Probably not .45, I think that would probably require a redesign of the chassis itself,
instead of being able to just continue to use this one standard component.
But my thought is, especially with the Springfield Armoury marketing tie-in,
there's probably a possibility to do a single-stack .45.
And I think a single-stack compact or sub-compact .45
could be a pistol that Springfield could market effectively,
so that might very well be something out there on the horizon.
Anyway ... frankly having looked at the whole history of pistols from HS Produkt,
it's really cool to see this company grow from a very amateur organisation
several decades ago making guns under duress during essentially
(it's not a civil war, I know the Croatians will all get mad if I say it's a civil war)
but essentially during a time of national warfare.
... Moving from ... this guy, their PHPs, the good old First Croatian Pistol.
Up to solid steel milled pistols, the HS-95.
Then to the ... next generation of polymer pistol with the HS2000.
And now on to the modern chassis system.
And every time they've made a new model the quality control has improved,
the machining has improved, they have an incredible manufacturing facility over there in Karlovac.
I had the chance to tour it, couldn't take any video of it,
but the amount of automation and scale of production there is really very impressive.
Anyway, I'm rambling on now because this is a much more interesting, cool pistol
than I anticipated than it would be, or that it seems to be on paper, anyway.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks again to Bear Arms in Scottsdale
for giving us access to this one to film for you today.
Thanks for watching.