Does anyone have one? Can these be purchased by non law enforcement?

I want one just because. I’ve shot conversions of different types and been shot by the Simunition rounds and have no desire to mess with it outside a controlled environment. I just think it’s be cool to have and I’d prefer it over a SIRT pistol.

I’ve not even looked into buying the Sim rounds.

Glock company policy is that they only be sold to LE. They pop up on the secondary market as police trades all the time though.

If you're not going to use it for force-on-force sim training, I'm not sure I see the point in buying one. Even for that, they suck. They're incredibly unreliable and in my experience more useful for training clearing malfunctions under pressure than anything else.

Even when they do feed and eject properly, they suck. On more than one occasion, I've been involved in a scenario where I knew I was making good shots, but they seemed to be having zero effect. At the end of the scenario, I'd check the gun and find four or five rounds squibbed in the barrel. That's the stuff that breeds nightmares.

The 17T will run fine if-

They are kept clean and maintain the recoil and magazine springs

And

You only load 10 rounds in the magazine.

Once we adopted doing it this way, we went from horrible problems with FTF/FTE to being problem free. We have about 10 guns that are 10-12 years old and once rebuilt (and kept clean) they run just as good as our gen5 17Ts.

From a bunch of time shooting Simunitions, every platform is finicky to some degree. Federal has a brand (think it’s called Force on Force) that won’t run in our 416s. All of the 16 inch guns run fine on it. We have 20 round magazines that are dedicated AR conversations. We only load about 16-17 rounds in them. We don’t set up scenarios that are extended gunfights so it really doesn’t matter.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
If you're not going to use it for force-on-force sim training, I'm not sure I see the point in buying one.

Yep. Their sole niche use is for force-on-force training. They're not really suited for anything else.

If you want to pay a premium just to have a simunition Glock to put on a shelf, then knock yourself out.

But if you're envisioning using them as some sort of in-home training pistol, just get a laser version like the SIRT and/or get a real Glock and dry fire it at home. (Sim rounds are more expensive than actual 9mm.)

Also understand that a simunition Glock is still legally a firearm, since it's a standard serialized Glock frame that can have a real slide assembly installed. So it still has to be transferred through a FFL. Whereas something like the SIRT is just a laser trainer, and not a firearm.

The ones we use are not ours. They belong to another agency who hosts a lot of our training. Like jljones suggested, we don't typically load them full because we're not trying to set up protracted gunfights in our scenarios, but we still get a lot of malfunctions. The last time we used them, I was involved in teaching the class and I made sure I cleaned and lubed all the ones that we were going to use before the class. It helped some, but we still had numerous malfunctions, as well as a gun that went down with squibs in the barrel. The colored marking rounds seem to work a little better than the non-marking ones, but we have had issues with both. I can't speak to the maintenance history on those guns, or spring replacements, but I'd imagine they are still original to the guns.

I went through the academy in February and when we did STOPS training with their guns it was about 15-20 degrees outside and the guns wouldn't run at all. Wouldn't even cycle more than one or two rounds at a time. We ultimately had to move a couple of cars into the gym and do the training inside because they couldn't get the guns to work.

Out sheriff's dept recently got a couple of Simunition conversion kits for their P320s. Their instructors are the only ones who use those, so they haven't been handed out to the masses, but from the limited use I've seen they do seem to be more reliable than the Glocks, at least so far.

+++ SIRT. Mine is the 320 clone.

I took two force on force classes at the Sig Academy and we were using modified Sig P229s and at least the two I used never malfunctions with multiple shots... and magazine changes....

We use the Simunitions Glock uppers and Colt AR uppers. We do have a couple Simunitions S&W 59 series conversion barrels. Left over from the old days when the department issued 5906’s. We have a 3 or 4 left over 5906’s that we give to the bad guys during force on force training. We have discovered that running a bronze barrel brush down the barrel a couple times after every scenario that involves shooting and not loading the mags over 10 rounds they work fine.

quote:

+++ SIRT

I use a SIRT (Glock 17) in my Basic Pistol classes. I have some reactive targets that I set up and have students shoot at. This reinforces the basics: sight alignment, trigger control, and breathing. It can be done w/o any recoil and it inspires confidence before actual firearm shooting. I usually introduce this during the "lunch break"!

UTM MMR is far superior to Force on Force and Simunition. I have used all of them pretty extensively.

The FoF and Sims stuff is fragile, tends to end up plugging barrels, and is not particularly accurate. You end up punching and lubing bores a lot. Magazines are more reliable if downloaded to 10 or fewer rounds.

I've used UTM at a couple classes. In one we did a half day of NLTA with four pistols shared between about twenty guys and essentially had no issues. I was shocked.

Thank you. More research is needed it seems.

I just think it’d be cool to have but maybe not as much as I thought at first.

Once I got my (G17) SIRT 110 pro, my GSSF scores went up. It’s a nice tool that can enhance skills despite lack of recoil management training. Grip and trigger press are among the most important things to work on.

My SIRT pistol has shown me the marked difference in bullet strike between a full trigger "emergency" pull and a "prepped" trigger pull. I am working on better accuracy with the full trigger stroke. I was very hesitant to buy the SIRT due to the cost. But it has proven to be a great training tool.

quote:

+++ SIRT. Mine is the 320 clone.

Yoopersigs, I'm thinking about getting one in anticipation of my now-CA-legal P320 which should arrive in about a month or so.
Does the trigger feel like the real 320?

quote:

Originally posted by Riley:
Thank you. More research is needed it seems.

I just think it’d be cool to have but maybe not as much as I thought at first.

Have you considered gas blowback airsoft? There are some high quality guns out there that will work in holsters for equivalent real guns, are safe to shoot indoors (you can build trap style targets to collect the BBs), and provide recoil that is not dissimilar to "real" NLTA guns.

Have used the Simunitions FX drop-in barrels on P228s and P226s, and the dedicated FX G17s (both the older "full metal" slides and the newer hyrid poly/metal slides.)

We had the same experiences jljones notes. Part of my routine as an instructor now includes running a brush and patch through the barrel every third or fourth student, and loading only 8-10 rounds (either the SIG or Glock platforms.) Works fine.

More than once, we DIDN'T do this and ended up with a completely, solid-plugged-with-FX-projectiles barrel. Like, 2-3 that didn't exit the barrel, and it took a failure to feed-- owing to a now-partially-blocked chamber-- for the trainee to figure it out.

Yep, cleaning between every 3-5 runs will typically keep it running pretty well. While we run student guns with 3-5 shots in a mag we run the instructor guns full and they do well with good cleaning.

Check recoil gun works I think it is, they typically have trade ins so its cheaper and available to the open market.

One other thing I will say they are useful for as well as the more obvious force on force, is for doing structure clearing/cqb/room clearing runs with paper bad guys, before progressing to live fire if that's the progression. I don't want to get domed under the back of the helmet with a SIM but I'd prefer it to the real thing. If you are training team tactics and have the budget you can do runs with SIMs and also do multiple colors to see whose shooting where.

sjtill:
The trigger in mine is pretty close to an OEM 320.
Bummer: No option for a flat trigger, which I have in all 3 of my 320s.

quote:

Originally posted by DaBigBR:

quote:

Originally posted by Riley:
Thank you. More research is needed it seems.

I just think it’d be cool to have but maybe not as much as I thought at first.

Have you considered gas blowback airsoft? There are some high quality guns out there that will work in holsters for equivalent real guns, are safe to shoot indoors (you can build trap style targets to collect the BBs), and provide recoil that is not dissimilar to "real" NLTA guns.

I looked briefly, but couldn’t get an idea for the true quality. I’ve seen some super fancy ones that mimic USPSA Open style guns but none that I could find.