The NGSW You Have at Home
The Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon program, which SIG won in April 2022, aims to use the XM7 rifle to replace the M4 Carbine series with America’s warfighters and the XM250 machine gun to do the same for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. While the M4 and M249 are 5.56 NATO platforms, the new NGSW series will use the Army’s new 6.8 Common Cartridge family of ammunition.
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)
That’s what makes the newest MCX Spear variant offered commercially so cool, as it is chambered not in SIG’s consumer .277 Fury variant of the cartridge but in 6.8x51mm – and SIG plans to make overruns of Army ammo available to consumers.
The rifles will still be able to shoot dimensionally identical .277 Fury, while other caliber options such as .308 and 6.5 CM are a barrel swap away.
Plus, there is military overrun ammo inbound.
The military overrun ammo on hand was 113-grain copper solid ball in 20-round boxes, 460-round cans, and 920-round crates. With a .330 ballistic coefficient and 3,200 FPS velocity out of a 16-inch barrel, these rounds spec out at 2,569 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle. The case is a brass/stainless steel hybrid that allows for increased muzzle velocity/energy compared to traditional brass.
More in my column at Guns.com.