Springfield Armory has continued their almost too hard charging advertising and naming convention with their latest offering. The new Echelon is a full sized, optics ready, striker duty pistol in the vein of an upsized Hellcat. It supports a serialized operating group ala SIG P320 esk which they call the COG (Central Operating Group) and the Variable Interface System (VIS) for the modular optic suite. The VIS replace plates with a selectable recoil boss layout to better interface with popular optics and anchor them better to the slide for energy transfer.
The Springfield XD series has been memed to hell and back for its sub-par performance in the field and the goofy marking choices in “Grip Zone” placement on the pistols. This successor may actually hold up and should be looked at with the cautious optimism if not outright enthusiasm.
Gone are the days we should be singing a gun’s praises, and if I hear the phrase Glock-killer again without it coming from Glock themselves burning their brand to the ground it will be too soon, but we can see how the larger market who like the SA name overall start picking it up and running it. We will also likely see a few trainers, independent enough from the SA sphere, run high round counts and see if this XD replacement stands up the way we’ve seen other pistol line successors successfully take on the mantels.
My opinion, this looks promising. It has my attention. There is nothing demanding that a company’s previous firearm model and any short comings it had is totally indicative of future performance. The Hellcat is a dramatic improvement on the XDS. I have no reason yet to suspect the Echelon models won’t do their job at this point. Let’s run them and see.
