German gun maker wins TSA contract to arm airline pilots

The Transportation Security Administration has selected the German
firearms
manufacturer Heckler & Koch to supply the .40-caliber semiautomatic
handguns
the agency will use to train and arm commercial airline pilots.

A company spokesman confirmed the contract award Friday. TSA notified
bidders by fax late Thursday. TSA officials were unable to comment as
of
Friday afternoon.

Although losing bidders may still file a protest, the award caps a
procurement effort that proved troublesome for TSA, which ran afoul of
leading handgun manufacturers in its attempt to buy handguns for its
next
class of pilots, scheduled to begin Sunday.

CongressDaily reported Wednesday that gun makers who expected "full and
open
competition" complained that TSA appeared to bow to congressional and
other
outside pressures at different stages of the process by favoring
certain
handgun manufacturers over others. Protests by the Italian firm Beretta
and
other companies prompted TSA on June 12 to open the competition
industry-wide and push back various deadlines and delivery dates.

TSA spokesman Robert Johnson adamantly denied in an interview earlier
this
week that the procurement process contributed to a delay in the summer
training classes. The agency has been under pressure from Congress to
accelerate the arming of commercial pilots under the Arming Pilots
Against
Terrorism Act enacted last November.

TSA's Federal Flight Deck Officers program allows pilots to volunteer
for
firearms training and become certified law enforcement officers,
authorized
to use a handgun to defend their cockpits from hostile intruders.

Potential bidders for the gun contract had been told by TSA that the
agency
wanted to buy as many as 9,600 handguns through fiscal 2006. The H&K
spokesman said the model chosen was the company's USP Compact .40-LEM
firearm, which are made in Oberndorf, Germany, and shipped to the U.S.
distribution center in Sterling, Virginia, USA.