Mossberg recently shared in a press release that they’d recently been awarded a new $11.6 million contract for additional 590A1 pump-action shotguns. This new contract continues a long-standing military reliance on this weapon for close-quarters combat and other specialized teams and roles.
The Mossberg 590A1 is a service-proven shotgun that was adapted from the highly popular Mossberg 500 to meet more rigorous military standards, including durability, safety, and reliability under harsh conditions. It is the only pump shotgun to pass the Army’s fairly strict Mil-Spec 3443E test, which entails sustained high-volume (3,000 rounds of 00 buck) use and robustness against drops, corrosion, and wear – basically everything you should expect from a service weapon. Adaptations include a now-required metal trigger guard and generally more metal in place of polymer throughout the shotgun’s construction, features that are exclusive to the 590A1 variants.
This shotgun’s ability to endure such sustained punishment without jamming or breaking underlines why it remains the military’s trusted pump shotgun decades after its original adoption in 1987, and why it looks like it’ll continue to serve the United States well into the 2020s.
Militarily, the 590A1 remains a highly versatile weapon for breaching, close-quarters battle, and shipboard defense when in service with the Navy. In fact, the Department of the Navy was the first branch of the military to requisition a shotgun to meet these standards.
In the civilian and law enforcement world, the 12-gauge pump is almost universally loved for its ruggedness and simplicity, even when compared to more modern, more complex semi-automatic designs that may be prone to failure under the same extreme conditions.
The shotgun’s heavy-walled barrel, metal trigger guard, and ambidextrous safety, in place of the standard functions on the 500, are specific additions based on feedback from Navy and Marine Corps users, so, in essence, it is a shotgun adapted by and for the military to meet their needs. That, however, has never stopped Mossberg from marketing the shotgun to civilians as well.
Beyond combat in theatre, pump-action shotguns like the 590A1 are widely used for force protection, prisoner transport, and base security, with less-lethal rounds being a perfectly logical reason to include a pump-action as part of the standard equipment list for LEOs and base security.
Although the days of DOGE seem to be gone, the contract seems to indicate that the current military administration has placed a lot more importance on weapon standardization across service branches, trying to simplify logistics, training, and cost-efficiency instead of chasing down an endless sea of new weapons systems that have yet to be vetted in any sort of real-world use.
“Mossberg is honored to receive an additional contract from the U.S. Department of Defense for the battle-proven 590A1 shotgun,” said John MacLellan, Mossberg’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “This award reflects our long commitment to supplying rugged, mission-capable firearms built to exacting standards — and reinforces our pledge to provide timely solutions that support the safety and effectiveness of U.S. service members.”
In summary, the U.S. Army’s procurement of more Mossberg 590A1s has made the company pretty damn proud, and I think they deserve a lot of praise for keeping a weapon in service with the U.S. Military for so long. Alongside greats like the 1911, M9, M1s, Remington 870, M4, and M16, I think the 590A1 will one day go down as one of the greatest military combat shotguns to ever grace the battlefield.
To learn more about this contract and what it entails, you can check out the full official Mossberg Press release here or check out more details on the Mossberg 590A1 shotgun on the official Mossberg website.
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