The Army has officially designated its newest rifle and automatic rifle the M7 and M250, respectively. The move, which the service touted as a “major program milestone,” comes weeks after the Army’s new rifle came in for some heavy criticism from within its own ranks.
Both weapons have now received their type classification that confirms they met “the Army’s stringent standards for operational performance, safety, and sustainment,” the service announced this week.
But an Army captain has raised serious questions about the Next Generation Squad Rifle — previously known as the XM7 — including whether the weapon’s 20-round magazine provides soldiers with enough ammunition for combat. (The War Zone was the first to report on the criticism, and you can read their deep dive here.)
“The XM7 is a tactically outdated service rifle that would be better classified as a designated marksman rifle, if that,” Army Capt. Braden Trent said during his presentation at the Modern Day Marine exhibition in Washington, D.C., in late April. “This rifle is a mechanically unsound design that will not hold up to sustained combat on a peer-on-peer conflict.”
Trent conducted his research into the rifle as part of his project for the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Warfare School. His views are not endorsed by the Defense Department, Army, or Marine Corps, according to his 52-page research paper on the subject.
Sig Sauer, which has been awarded a contract to produce the rifle, pushed back on Trent’s assertion that the M7 is “unfit for use as a modern service rifle.”
“We have a very large staff of individuals that work daily on that rifle to ensure that every aspect of its performance is scrutinized, every aspect of its safety is criticized,” Jason St. John, the senior director of strategic products for Sig Sauer, told Task & Purpose for a previous story. “We are highly confident that we have provided the U.S. Army soldier with a very robust weapon system that is not only safe, but it performs at the highest levels.”
Still, questions remain about whether the rifle, which chambers a 6.8mm round, has enough magazine capacity. The M7 is expected to replace the M4A1, which has a 30-round magazine.
Trent said he observed a live-fire exercise in which soldiers equipped with the XM7 burned through most of their ammunition within 15 minutes while trying to suppress a simulated enemy, even though they had borrowed spare magazines from radio operations, medics, and platoon leaders.
Brig. Gen. Phil Kinniery, commandant for the Army’s Infantry School and Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia, told Task & Purpose that commanding officers ultimately determine how much ammunition their units will carry into battle, and the traditional seven-magazine load could be adjusted.
Kinniery also said that the Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle’s larger round will give soldiers an advantage on the battlefield.
“From having been in several firefights throughout my career and deployments in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that [6.8mm round] round stops the enemy,” Kinniery said. “What we’re actually bringing to infantry soldiers or, really, the close combat force across the Army, is something that stops the enemy at one round versus having to shoot multiple rounds at the enemy to get them to stop.”
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