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.
Defense contracting is the easiest job. Just throw out some dumb shit to impress boomers and literal kids in the military and you get to be a millionaire
You can just declare that the laws of physics aren't real and get a 7 billion dollar contract lmao.
"We going to re-engineer the bullet so it can go though armour without needing to be armour piercing" was the entire project here lol.