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Uncle Sam had no intentions whatsoever of buying Colt 1991 series guns for Desert Shield/Desert Storm. The DoD was already well underway with issuing Beretta M9s to us "lucky" GIs by then, a process that had begun in January of 1985. If 1911s were required by folks like Spec Ops, they simply requisitioned the folks in depot level storage to pull older 1911A1s back into the fray.
This is so true. My unit still hadn't taken the M9 plunge when Desert Shield started, we still had our 1911's. It wasn't until well after Desert Storm that we were finally issued those (JMO) M9 paperweights. On a side note we still had M16A1's also......
I have a Kimber TLE II, that I love. I like the 1911 platform mainly because it is a single stack and very slim.