Springfield Armory has cut a compensator into the Echelon’s slide and laser-sculpted a new texture onto the grip. Announced Oct. 13, the Echelon Pro Comp lineup comes in three sizes, all chambered in 9 mm Luger.
The Echelon Pro 4.0C Comp is a compact with a 4-inch barrel and three 18-round magazines in the box, and the 4.5F is a full-size gun with a 4.5-inch barrel, an 8-inch overall length and three 20-round mags. Then there’s the 4.0FC, which puts the compact slide on a full-size grip module. That gives the pinky a place to live and makes room for the same 20-round magazines as the 4.5F. Weight barely moves across the lineup, from 23 ounces for the compact to 25 for the full-size, with the 4.0FC at 24. All three measure 1.2 inches across the grip.
Every shot sends gas from the ported barrel up through the slide, and the blast shoves the muzzle back down against recoil. On a polymer pistol that weighs about a pound and a half empty, that counts for more than it would on a heavy steel race gun. Springfield machines the comp right into the billet slide. The barrel is hammer-forged with a 1:10-inch twist and shares the slide’s Melonite finish, though only the slide gets Springfield Gray Cerakote on top.
LightForged is Springfield’s name for the grip process. Lasers reshape the polymer, so the surface has the bite of hand stippling without the unevenness that creeps in when a person is holding the iron. The process also controls the shape of the texture and exactly where it goes on the module. Badlands, the initial pattern made this way, looks like a desert floor months after the last rain, broken into hard little plates that grab the palm.
Most of the usual first-weekend upgrades come installed. A flared steel magazine well sits at the base of the grip and comes off for anyone who’d rather run flush-fit magazines. Under the slide, the recoil spring rides a captive stainless steel guide rod. The front sight pairs tritium with an orange luminescent ring, so it’s easy to pick up in bright light or none, and the rear is black and serrated.
Strip those away and it’s still an Echelon. The serialized Central Operating Group, the meat of the gun, lifts out and moves to grip modules of other sizes and colors. Since the modules themselves aren’t firearms, swapping one takes no paperwork. The most common optic footprints mount straight to the slide through the Variable Interface System, and the controls work from either side.
Each model has an $899 MSRP. Learn more at springfield-armory.com.
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