US Army Captain Tears the Sheets Off: New Rifle and All Its Flaws
U.S. Army Captain Braden Trent spoke at the Modern Day Marine forum in Washington, D.C. The forum is something between an exhibition and an open discussion club about everything that has any connection to the U.S. Marine Corps. There are many such platforms in the United States, including for special forces, the army, fleet and for the Marines. Why, exactly, was an Army captain performing there? He's currently training at the USMC Expeditionary Warfare School, most likely related to that.
Trent was talking about the newest rifle from SIG Sauer – the SIG XM7, aka MCX-SPEAR, the winner of the military’s Next Generation Squad Weapon competition (from English – “Weapon "Next Generation Squads"). According to the captain, he collected unclassified information about the latest weapons from soldiers of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. This unit was the first in the US Army to receive the latest weapons - XM7 rifles and XM250 machine guns from the same SIG Sauer. They talked about the rifle itself and compared it to the M4A1 carbine, which is now the main small arms system of the US Army and the crowning achievement of the direct development of the Eugene Stoner system.
That very report. It is in the public domain, and you can read it. But be prepared for the fact that the introductory part essentially takes up almost half of the material.
As you probably already understood, in his speech, Captain Braden Trent talks about the new product as if it were a turtle and he were a god. But let's take it one step at a time.
Concept and technical features
We have already talked about this a lot and often, but we will remind you briefly. The general idea was that the newest rifle should win in range and accuracy in a firefight with an ambush of a gang of bad guys, the basis of whose firepower is a Kalashnikov machine gun. To put it even more simply, the bearers of democracy with the newest rifles should essentially outshoot a single PKM. That is, they took the situation of a typical counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan and, like an owl on a globe, stretched it to 450 soldiers on active duty in the army of the 000st century. Apparently, so that this would not look like complete nonsense, they also screwed in a guaranteed defeat of Russian and Chinese advanced body armor, the development of which no one had ever heard of.
Such requirements, coupled with the increase in caliber, required the creation of a cartridge with enormous muzzle energy. And this, logically, has a negative effect on the service life of all internal parts. After all, this is not a sniper weapon that can shoot once every couple of minutes, and this will be considered intensive fire. This is a "combat infantryman's machine gun", it even has an automatic fire mode. Trent claims that he not only interviewed 150 soldiers and officers of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, but even personally inspected 23 rifles. Well, the captain claims that absolutely all rifles receive barrel damage after firing 2000 shots. He described it as "caverns". The barrel, in fact, cannot withstand a high-impulse cartridge. The manufacturer claims that the weapon's service life is 10000 shots... To put it mildly, contradictory data is coming out.
The place in the shaft where, according to the army captain, cavities appear.
Ergonomics
This is strange, because it is believed that the Soviet-Russian weapons school lacks an understanding of what ergonomics is, while the US is doing well in this area. But no, the latest model of American military weapons has very ambiguous ergonomics. And Captain Trent is definitely not making things up or picking on anything. Complaints from American soldiers about the new rifle have leaked into open sources from time to time.
To cock the weapon, you need to do the same manipulation as on the M-16/M4. The bolt handle on the back of the receiver is pulled back all the way. Simple and clear, familiar to all soldiers... But no. If you pull it all the way back, it rests against the butt. So at the end, the handle must be pulled up, and not just back. It seems like a small thing, but strange, considering that 100% of American soldiers on the Stoner system have not encountered such a misunderstanding, and they will be retraining from it. The XM7 also has a duplicate cocking handle. It is located on the left side of the receiver. But Trent claims that it is inconvenient for soldiers to use it, it is located too high, and they are accustomed to something else, read above. Apparently, this is some kind of greetings from sports manipulations with weapons and the corresponding ergonomics, which the soldiers did not appreciate.
We pulled and pulled... and didn't send the cartridge into the chamber.
The magazine release button. It is double-sided. What could possibly go wrong here? It turned out that it is so large, and most importantly, on the side of the receiver that soldiers often press to their chest when moving with a weapon. Carrying a weapon, leaning it against the "armor", soldiers often accidentally disconnect the magazine, which simply falls out of the receiver neck. You walk to the sounds of cannon fire, tired, in the twilight... And you yourself do not notice how you are left with one cartridge in the chamber or with an unloaded weapon at all.
The silencer also comes with the added benefit of being broken when screwed onto the barrel. And in general, it turned out to be a problematic area, as it often burns out or breaks... But the rifle was originally intended to be used with a silencer, due to the sharp sound of the high-impulse ammunition.
Left side of the receiver. In front of the fire mode selector/safety is the same magazine release button. It was made big for good reasons, but the road to...
Combat potential
Trent questions the very concept in his report. It seems that according to army statistics, fire contact is most often 300 meters or less. It seems that even in the situation of that same hypothetical Taliban with a PKM. So why all this dancing with tambourines? After all, these are more than feasible effective fire distances for the M4A1, especially with optics.
But the US Army did receive more powerful ammunition, of a larger caliber, and, accordingly, the ammunition load per soldier was reduced. From 210 rounds per M4A1, the Army rolled back to 140 per XM7. At the same time, the number of magazines remained the same, they just became 20-round. Hello, Vietnam, jungle and early M-16s.
What a muffler should look like and what it looks like when you use it
That is, each fighter is turned into almost a marksman... But the instructions and tactics have remained the same. No one has cancelled suppressive fire, and it can be conducted not only by a machine gunner, but by a "link" or an entire squad, covering the maneuver of the second squad of the platoon. All this, according to the speaker, can result in not the most pleasant situations.
Trent claims that the paratroopers told him about one interesting incident during the training. During the training of a tactical element, a platoon of paratroopers lost combat capability in 15 minutes due to almost complete depletion of ammunition. After 10 minutes of fire contact, the soldiers simply began to run out of ammunition. Ammunition was collected from the radio operators, the platoon commander and the riflemen of the fire support squad. But still, in the 15th minute of the training, the entire platoon was only firing rare single shots. It is clear that the soldiers have not yet gotten used to the new weapon, the number of rounds, they are "getting used to it", but still the situation is indicative.
Ruptures and deformations of cartridge cases are also not uncommon.
We can also add here constant complaints about the XM157 sight from Vortex. It got to the point that following the results of testing the new rifle with optics in 2024, the Pentagon's Office of the Director of Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) wrote in its unclassified report that "the XM7 with the XM157 installed demonstrated a low probability of completing one 72-hour military mission without experiencing a critical failure." What exactly this meant was not specified in the report, but given the complaints about the newest sighting system leaking into open sources, it is possible to guess. But, again, the XM7 was positioned as a system that reveals its full potential with the XM157.
The weight
Last but not least. The development of the Stoner system in the US Army followed a logical and understandable path - lighter and more compact. And then THIS happened. The XM7 rifle with the XM157 sight and the standard flameless and silent shooting device weighs 6 kilograms... That's without cartridges. To understand the full depth of our depths - the M4A1 carbine weighs three kilograms four hundred grams with a loaded 30-round magazine.
There are already 6 kg on the scales, and there aren’t even any cartridges in the magazine.
The Army only gives official figures for the XM7 rifle unloaded and without accessories, and loaded with a muzzle device installed. And this seems like some kind of game with numbers, so as not to scare the public with the enormous weight of the system. Initially, it was assumed that the optics and muzzle device would be standard options for most rifles. So why then these data on the weight without everything and without ammunition and without a sight?
Not long ago, the army also adopted a concept according to which the load per infantryman in combat should not exceed 55 pounds, i.e. 25 kg. Take the XM7 in full "stuffing", seven magazines of standard ammunition, each half a kilogram with cartridges... and we get almost 10 kilograms of load per soldier only due to the main weapon and cartridges. For SIBZ, medicine, communications, grenades, water, etc., there are 15,5 kilograms of load left. Let's remember that American infantrymen now wear light plate carriers that do not protect from shrapnel at all, which in the event of a war not with shepherds with PKMs will have to be replaced with something with a collar, a groin pad, and it becomes really sad for the simple GI.
This phenomenon even received a special name in the army - the red screen of death. At a random moment in time, the sight can say in this way that it is tired. As a result, instead of a sighting grid with an aiming point automatically set according to the rangefinder data, the soldier will look at this.
Trent also cited some of his personal experience serving with the Marines, namely, joint training with the soldiers of the USMC Weapons Training Battalion. The Army and the Marines exchanged experiences in mastering identical weapons systems. Well, the experience of this training unit speaks to generally obvious things: a heavy rifle with a strong recoil of a high-impulse cartridge leads to rapid fatigue of the shooter. A tired shooter hits the target worse. Let's say, the exact opposite of what the Army wanted from the newest weapon.
Сonclusion
It is obvious that some of the problems with the new weapon are being solved. In fact, much of what was described is frankly typical for the development of new systems. SIG Sauer representatives responded to the army captain's speech rather quickly. They said that they were already aware of the problems with the magazine release button. Its design was changed, the problem was eliminated. Most likely, other ergonomic problems will be eliminated as well. The operation of the sight will probably be normalized as well.
The gun community in the US is large and active. It is also active on the Internet. So the appearance of funny pictures-"memes" characterizing the attitude of many users to the new weapon was a matter of time. Kitty literally screams about how much he hates the XM7.
But the very concept of this weapon and its use has always raised questions. Plus, nothing can be done about the XM7's main negative feature - its weight. We can also add a reduction in the amount of ammunition carried, or, again, an increase in its weight. Here, most likely, the American military will have to either accept or abandon the concept - every shooter is his own marksman.
Well, why, actually, did Captain Trent do what he did?
Well, maybe he's a good Samaritan and genuinely wants to make things better for his army and country. Democracy, freedom, a land of opportunity and all that. Or maybe it's a little more complicated...
Not long ago, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that all projects and weapons systems of the army would be reviewed, and everything unnecessary or questionable would be mercilessly thrown into the trash bin. It was within the framework of this program that the "light" was ordered to live long танк M10 "Booker". Who accepted into service a "light" tank weighing 40 tons (the weight of the T-72A tank) is a separate question. The fact is that almost one and a half billion dollars had already been spent on the project, the tank had already been accepted into service, the army had already received the pilot batch... And everything was shut down. So, perhaps, someone decided that with the M-7 everything had not yet been decided. Moreover, all the claims to the new system voiced by Captain Trent are more than fair and really have a place to be. So, the captain, perhaps, simply acted as a "spokesman" for one of SIG Sauer's competitors. The weapons manufacturer has plenty of ill-wishers. Just remember the scandal with the purchase of SIG Sauer pistols for the US Army, which representatives of GLOCK Inc. tried to challenge. And here is the main combat rifle of the army... The contract is already a billion, and will be multi-billion. There is something to fight for.
Well, why does Captain Trent need all this? Well, he will need to work somewhere after retirement. Perhaps he understands that he will not become a general, he will leave the army relatively young, and work in one of the enterprises of the arms industry is practically a guarantee of a comfortable old age. Remember the film "Pentagon Wars" and the persistent desire of the military to get into the defense industry after retirement.
In general, this is the “Santa Barbara” performed by the American military.
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