Heckler & Koch HK45
.45 ACP semi-automatic pistol
The Heckler & Koch HK45 (Heckler & Koch, .45 ACP) is a semi-automatic pistol designed by the German arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch.
Overview
The HK45 was designed to meet requirements set forth in the U.S. Military Joint Combat Pistol program which had the purpose of arming the U.S. Military with a .45 ACP semi-automatic pistol instead of the 9mm M9 pistol. Heckler & Koch developed the HK45 with the help of retired SFOD-D operator Larry Vickers and firearms instructor Ken Hackathorn. The Joint Combat Pistol program was suspended in 2006 and eventually cancelled due to the price of re-arming the entire U.S. armed forces. The M9 pistol remained the standard issue handgun for the U.S. Military until the adoption of the Sig P320 by the U.S. Army in January 2017. Even though the Joint Combat Pistol program had ended, HK decided to make the HK45 available on the commercial market as well as to law enforcement and military groups.
The HK45 represents an evolutionary advancement of the USP Compact chambered in .45 ACP and shares the operating principles and many internal parts of that weapon. Significant effort went towards making it more ergonomic than the HK USP Compact. These include a full-size grip eliminating the need for the older weapon's 'elephant foot' cover on the 10-round magazine, an ambidextrous slide release, a more ergonomic grip with finger grooves and interchangeable backstraps to fit differently sized hands. The HK45 uses the same magazines as the USP Compact chambered in .45 ACP, but with different floor plates.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1563763. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heckler & Koch HK45” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.