{"id":172517,"date":"2025-08-09T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=172517"},"modified":"2025-08-08T22:23:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T02:23:30","slug":"usaf-m18-case-gets-more-spicy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=172517","title":{"rendered":"USAF M18 case gets more spicy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-137821 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sig-sauer-p320-m18-right-side-view-300x252.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"252\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sig-sauer-p320-m18-right-side-view-300x252.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sig-sauer-p320-m18-right-side-view-396x333.jpg 396w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sig-sauer-p320-m18-right-side-view-768x646.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sig-sauer-p320-m18-right-side-view-1536x1291.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sig-sauer-p320-m18-right-side-view.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We talked about the Sig P320\/M18 kerfuffle as it relates to the death of an active duty USAF Airman Brayden Lovan last month, starting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=171959&amp;cpage=1\">here<\/a>. After that incident, which was reported as an uncommanded discharge when the Security Forces airman was taking his belt off, the Global Strike Command and then the whole Air Force started a safety review of the M18. The P320 that the M18 is based off of has long been said to have such issues.<\/p>\n<p>Well now an airman has been arrested &#8220;on suspicion of making a false official statement, obstruction of justice, and involuntary manslaughter.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/taskandpurpose.com\/news\/air-force-m18-arrest\/\">Task and Purpose has the story<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An airman has been arrested in connection with the shooting death of Airman Brayden Lovan, 21, last month, which prompted the Air Force to curtail the use of M18 pistols, according to the service.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOut of an abundance of caution and based on initial reporting, Air Force authorities ordered various safety precautions involving the M18 after this tragic event,\u201d an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement \u201c Since then, the investigation has progressed and an individual has now been arrested on suspicion of making a false official statement, obstruction of justice, and involuntary manslaughter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Air Force has not yet identified the airman who was arrested for the July 20 shooting of Lovan at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs with all individuals accused of a crime, the person arrested in this case is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cThe investigation in this case is ongoing and further details are not available.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On July 21, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command suspended the use of M18 pistols pending the outcome of investigations into Lovan\u2019s death. Security Forces airmen with the command were issued M4 carbines to replace their M18s.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly afterward, some Air Combat Command units also temporarily restricted using M18s, although the command as a whole did not suspend using the pistols.<\/p>\n<p>The Air Force then ordered service-wide inspections of its M18 pistols to \u201cvalidate the serviceability of weapons and reinforce confidence in their use,\u201d a service spokesperson told Task &amp; Purpose earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>However, Officials from the Army, Navy and Marine Corps told Task &amp; Purpose in July that those services had no plans to pause use of the pistols, which are made by Sig Sauer.<\/p>\n<p>The M18 pistol is a compact variant of the Army\u2019s Modular Handgun System, which all the military branches have adopted as their standard sidearms since 2017. The pistols replaced the M9, which first entered service in 1985.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We talked about the Sig P320\/M18 kerfuffle as it relates to the death of an active &hellip; <a title=\"USAF M18 case gets more spicy\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=172517\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">USAF M18 case gets more spicy<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":137821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air-force","category-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/137821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}