101st Airborne Starts Getting Its New Guns
Part of the famed 101st Airborne Division recently became the first unit issued with the new Next Generation Squad Weapon system.
A March 28 social media post from the PEO Soldier office detailed that the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, a unit of the Fort Campbell-based 101st, received the NGSW, marking a key milestone for the program that intends to replace the 5.56 NATO M4 Carbine and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon with a new family of weapons chambered in 6.8mm.
The new guns will be used in an upcoming New Equipment Training, an in-depth, train-the-trainer course, set for this month. From there, the systems and training will fan out across the brigade.
Elements of the 101st had been previously involved in an extensive series of more than 100 tests spanning over 25,000 hours and 1.5 million rounds of ammo with the platform.
An infantryman with the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment (Strike Force), 2nd Brigade (Strike), 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), executes chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense (CBRN defense) day qualification with the Next Generation Squad Weapon-Rifle and Fire Control while operationally testing at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. (Photo Credit: Mark Scovell, Visual Information Specialist, U.S. Army Operational Test Command)
The program includes SIG Sauer’s XM-7 rifle, which will fill the role currently held by the M4 series, the SIG XM250 light machine gun slated to replace the M249, and the Vortex-produced M157 Fire Control optics system used on both platforms. SIG also supplies suppressors for the platforms. Of note, the XM-7 is based on SIG’s MCX Spear series.
Next up for NGSW is to equip a National Guard armored brigade in May.
More in my column at Guns.com.