Just saw this. The Army Has Finally Fielded Its Next Generation Squad Weapons | Military.com
Will others make the switch too?
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Interesting… heavier caliber, weighs nearly 25% more… Increased range & hitting power is nice… I wonder how much more a basic load of ammo will weigh…
It’s gonna be a LOT of years before the M16/M4/M249 family is fully replaced across all components of the Army… Active, Reserve, & Guard.
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Its actually going to be a long time before the whole of the Army gets the new rifle as the factory has to tool up for the new round.
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Yeah, that too! Logistics. But hopefully afterwards surplus, 5.56mm ammo will flood the civilian market and knock down the prices there
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I’m no firearms expert, how does this compare to the new British KS-1 weapon that has just started to be introduced? I note they use different ammo.
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Oh well. The last piece of kit that I carried is now gone. Man I feel old.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on some good cheap surplus 5.56 NATO.
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Based on the article, the M4/M16 will still be around for a long time. The current plan is to only buy 111,428 M7 rifles. That isn’t even half the Army’s worth of M4/M16s.
“the service has a long-term plan of buying 111,428 XM7 rifles”
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I hear ya Matt lol
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Here’s another article that popped up on The War Zone last week.
I thought for sure you guys had already discussed this.
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Hell, hey do not even have my MOS anymore.
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Aren’t the British using the KS-1 now?
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I’ve never heard of this new British rifle, let alone seen one.
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And 1/35 NGSW figures have already been made by Magic Factory. 
A manufacturer has yet to make the figures and NGSW in a larger scale than 1/35.
There are three figures in this kit as the fourth is the Magic Factory 1/35 robot dog with machine gun on its back (sold separately along with a UAV).
Available at Lucky Models and HobbyEasy of Hong Kong.
https://www.luckymodel.com/scale.aspx?item_no=MGF-7504
https://www.hobbyeasy.com/en/data/ayk0cjghm5sapf6aydpg.html
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I think it’s been designated as the L403A1 but so far only Royal Marines, Ranger Regiment and SF are getting them. Not 100% sure
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There’s an almost historical irony here; back in the 50s the Brits developed an excellent rifle – the EM- 2, with a calibre of 7mm (.280”). That’s not too far off 6.8mm of the new US system.
At the time, the weapon, albeit issued on a limited basis, was eventually canned because the US – then, obviously the driving force behind NATO – insisted, in the interests of weapon commonality (ie NATO standardisation) - that 7.62mm was to be the battlefield round. So, a weapon with outstanding potential was binned and the US imposed calibre of 7.62 accepted. This was driven in Brit governmental circles by the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, a fan of all things American.
Funnily enough, in the 60s the US blithely skipped over to 5.56mm, leaving most NATO nations in the lurch and having to play catch-up over the ensuing decades.
So, the rest of NATO now with 5.56mm, the US about to bring in to service a 6.8 mm design, and the excellent EM-2 of the 50s largely forgotten.
I cite all this, not in a fit of nationalistic fervour (although my generation played with toy soldiers equipped with said weapon) but rather as a somewhat wry observance. Plus ça change and all that.
On a separate note, I just wonder what the EM-2, had it survived, would look like today with, say, plastic furniture and some of the more useful sights and add-ons that have come to fruition over the decades between.
Just as a reminder, the EM-2:
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So it sounds like here that the US Army will purchase enough rifles only to equip the combat arms FLOT types (Infantry, Cav, SOF, etc.) in a non NATO standard caliber, so ammunition will certainly be a logistical issue in certain scenarios… particularly when it weighs more than the type it’s replacing, so fewer rounds can be carried by the troops. Now throw in joint operations with the other services in the same theater of action potentially not having these weapons or supporting ammo…
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I realize weight is always an issue, but…
As a twenty year old SF dude, I carried a hundred pounds of heavy shyte.
At forty, the first time I went to combat, I carried a hundred pounds of lightweight shyte.
It seems no matter what happens, you’re always doomed to carry more.
210 rounds of 5.56 (seven full mags) weighs about nine pounds.
I’ll take a SWAG and say the new round might weigh almost 50% more. So - 13 1/2 pounds give or take, I think I’d take that over ever having to carry two or three PRC-71 batteries under my field jacket again to keep them warm.
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Reminds me of the saying “What was old, is new”
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