The Springfield Echelon pistol was released today, and it's a significant step forward for Croatian manufacturer HS Produkt. In an effort to appeal to new military and police tenders as well as introduce a forward-looking new design, the company has brought out a pistol based on a serialized chassis like that of the SIG P365 and P320. HS Produkt recognized that their previous design (the XD and XD-M in the US and the HS2000 and HS9 in Europe) was falling behind. Its grip safety was getting it rejected from a lot of major tenders, but rather than just made a new versions without that element, they chose to move to a whole new platform. Work began about 2 years ago, and it is now ready for market.

For now, the Echelon is available only in this basic configuration, although that does include a lot of premium features - light rail, ambi controls, tritium front sight, and an optics mounting plate. A threaded barrel is also available separately. In the future, I have no doubt we will see a wide variety of other configurations from subcompact to oversize competition models - that is one of the core strengths of the chassis system, after all.