There's not a ton written about this that I can find, but cracks are appearing in the US military's plan to replace the M4 with a heavier battle rifle designed to defeat body armor. Sig Sauer, which also holds contracts for the current generation pistol and LMG, won a contract last year to also provide the US military with a new rifle. This rifle is to be called the XM7. The civilian equivalent is the Sig Spear. Calling this thing an assault rifle is a bit of a stretch, as it is very heavy and uses heavy ammunition. It turns out that the rifle is failing to penetrate modern body armor without the use of tungsten bullets. Also its reliability is questionable.
Doesn't this already exist as a modern weapons platform? The SCAR-H is supposed to be that.
Lmao so instead of spending money on an existing gun that actually works at the thing they want it to do they decided to go with a gun that didn’t yet exist and has failed to do what they want? :amerikkka-clap:
In the end, yeah.
Basically the army wanted to defeat level four body armour, and no 5.56 round that the M4/16 fires, even the armour penetrating ones, can do that. So they want to replace these guns.
The only round that was available that can be fired by assault/battle rifles, that can defeat level four armour is the modern black tip 7.62x51mm round with a tungsten carbide core. The SCAR-H can fire this, it is chambered in 7.62x51. But the army and sig thought they could increase the efficiency of the 7.62x51 to a point that it could defeat level four armour without needing the tungsten core. That is what the point of the 6.8x51 round, and the new Sig rifle was.
It turns out the increase in efficiency is not enough to penetrate level four armour. They still need the tungsten core to do that, even with the 6.8x51 round. So the army is in the exact same situation as before, needing special ammunition to defeat the level four body armour. Only now with a gun 2lbs heavier than the SCAR-H, firing some over-engineered ammunition that's no better than the ammo the SCAR-H fires.
Penetration this, penetration that, just give everyone body armor and BARs with .30-06 ball ammo again so they can have long range boxing matches
Okay unironically make weapons less deadly
An injured person is out of the war anyway! Long range boxing matches is the future.
The FN SCAR was one of the rejected submissions for the NGSW contract for which the Sig Spear was selected.
But the SCAR is lighter (7.9lbs vs 9.8lbs), a proven weapon already in use with special forces and can fire the 7.62x51mm round. The 6.8x51mm round they want to use in the XM7 is already failing body armour penetration tests, so what's the point of using it then?
This sounds like some contract fuckery, in that the new weapon has to be made by Sig.
It is interesting that in the last 5 or 6 years Sig has secured contracts for basically all the new light arms. I'm not a big enough gun nut to have an opinion on whether the contracts were deserved based on the relative quality of their submissions.
Me neither, but even with my base knowledge it sounds like the US DOD wanted to dump money into manufacturing a whole new ammunition type and gun, and the Sig contracts allowed them to fulfill that role with the 6.8x51mm round.
From what I've gathered from gun community scuttlebutt, it's a combination of very aggressively pricing their bids, and being very savvy about navigating and circumventing the testing process. So we're in this place of "maybe Sig's stuff is good? maybe they can actually make enough without cutting corners?"
They're timing this exactly correctly, as the US military is in the long ongoing process of refitting all their equipment after two decades of war on terror shit using tech from the 80s. Stuff like scopes and accessories of course are a huge bonanza, and legitimately a powerful force multiplier. But the actual tech of the shooty bits has plateaued for decades, and we see stuff like the m17 and m5, which are, at best, slightly nicer than what they were previously using.
10 fucking pounds? why not put wheels on it
It also has a ridiculously long barrel and recoil mechanism/supressor to try control the recoil of the new ammunition. Its just mad that they want this thing to be a standard issue service rifle lol.
My assumption is that you can hit a guy wearing body armor with the rifle and it will do damage.
That was the point, but it's failed at that.
They wanted to penetrate level four armour (rated up to black tip 30.06) with the new 6.8x51mm ammunition without needing any special cores or armour penetrating ammunition, due to the increased efficiency of the 6.8x51 vs the 7.62x51.
But that increased efficiency is no where near as big as they thought it would be, so the new 6.8x51 ammunition cannot do that. Just like the 7.62x51 ammunition, the 6.8x51 needs a tungsten core to penetrate level four armour. Which makes it's entire existence pointless.
The military is in the exact same situation as before, needing the special ammunition to defeat level four body armour. And they can't go back to 5.56 ammunition for the new guns, because even green tip armour penetrating 5.56 can already be defeated by level 3+ body armour.
No I mean take the rifle and clobber the enemy over the head with it.
:think-about-it:
Lol. It is heavier, so honestly probably the only thing it does better than the other guns.
:data-laughing: