We have already reported in detail on the Bundeswehr's "Special Forces Pistol System" tender here on all4shooters. Here you can find the corresponding article on the P14 and P14K, in which the German manufacturer Carl Walther was successful with a PDP variant.
However, there is now also news regarding the more interesting service pistol tender for the "normal" German armed forces as the successor to the Heckler & Koch P8 – known in official jargon as the P13. The competition is entering the next round and, according to reports, only three of the six manufacturers originally involved appear to be left.
These candidates are still in the running for the P13 tender
These are AREX from Slovenia, Česká Zbrojovka (CZ) from the Czech Republic and GLOCK from Austria. This selection is hardly surprising when you realise that the purchase price of the new service pistol will ultimately be the decisive criterion. This is because the tender will be carried out without prior comparative tests and the price will be listed with a weighting of 100 per cent as the only award criterion in the opening of the competition. Of course, all competing products must fulfil the P13 requirements, but no additional points will be awarded for exceeding the requirements, which is underpinned by the price as the sole award criterion. One of the requirements was that the pistol submitted must have already been introduced into the armed forces of another NATO member state in a minimum number of 5,000 units.
The Bundeswehr Procurement Office (BAAINBw) launched two separate tenders for the new P13 in 9x19mm. These include the competition initiated in November of last year for a seven-year framework contract for the manufacturing and delivery of the pistol. According to insider information, this tender will also include the appropriate carrying equipment.
Just one month later, in December 2024, the call for tenders for the "P13 pistol carrying system" followed. The BAAINBw announcement on the European online procurement platform TED states: "The carrying equipment should enable the safe carry of the new pistol in and reflect the different types of carry." "The contract award does not include the procurement of holsters. These are to be made usable via a predefined interface with the carrying equipment to be procured as part of the procedure", is the further BAAINBw formulation. Here, too, the purchase price takes centre stage, meaning that only the three most cost-effective offers from the entire field of bidders will be considered further. Within the scope of a seven-year contract, up to 186,000 carrying systems and accessories are to be procured, 62,000 of which are expected to be fixed orders.
This naturally leads to the conclusion that the new Bundeswehr service pistol P13 will also be ordered in similar quantities.
