Key Points – A US Army Captain, Braden Trent, recently ignited a “firestorm” by presenting research highly critical of the new SIG Sauer XM7 rifle, the M4A1’s replacement under the Next Generation Squad Weapon program.
-Speaking at the Modern Day Marine exhibition, Trent cited serious reliability concerns based on his observations, including excessive barrel wear after approximately 2,000 rounds, component breakages, high combat weight, and rapid ammunition depletion during live-fire exercises, deeming the XM7 “unfit.”
-SIG Sauer representatives strongly rebutted these findings, stating Trent lacked full program understanding and made “significant misrepresentations” regarding the rifle’s performance, chamber pressures, and ongoing improvements.
Army Captain Ignites Firestorm Over The New XM7 Rifle
The new SIG Sauer XM7 rifle is supposed to replace the long-serving M4A1 carbine under the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program. However, an Army Captain wrote a scathing critique of the weapon that ignited a firestorm of criticism about the weapon and the manufacturer, SIG Sauer.
Army CPT Braden Trent presented his research on the XM7 at the Modern Day Marine exhibition in Washington, D.C., which he claims shows that the rifle is inferior to the M4A1.
Trent says that data he collected shows the Army’s new 6.8x51mm XM7 service rifle suffering from serious reliability issues, including excessive barrel wear and regular breakages of key components. Based in part on observations of live-fire exercises involving XM7-armed soldiers, he claims that these problems, together with a host of other factors, make the gun “unfit” for its intended purpose.
As part of his research, Trent said he visited the 1st Brigade Combat Team “Bastogne,” 101st Airborne Division, the first active-duty Army unit to receive the XM7. Trent said he interviewed more than 150 soldiers and disassembled 23 XM7 rifles.
In his remarks, CPT Trent, who was a student at the Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School, presented his findings at the Modern Day Marine exhibition, calling the XM7 “a tactically outdated service rifle” that falls short of the demands for infantrymen in modern warfare.
The Army intends to purchase 111,428 XM7s, 13,334 XM250s, and 124,749 XM157s. The XM7 and XM250 are in line to replace a substantial portion of the service’s existing M4A1 carbines (an AR-15/M16 family design) and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW), respectively, both of which are chambered to fire the 5.56x45mm cartridge.
The XM7 Next Generation Squad Weapon
The XM7 is a modular, piston-driven, select-fire, magazine-fed, 6.8mm rifle. Its fully ambidextrous controls are similar to M4/M4A1 carbine operations with additional ergonomic features to enhance user operation, including a non-reciprocating left-side charging handle, collapsible/side-folding buttstock, and free-floating MLOK® handguard.
The weapon was designed to be suppressed, and it comes with a quick-detach suppressor optimized for the system. This suppressor reduces sound and visible flash signatures and significantly decreases the flow of gases back to the receiver.
After the war in Afghanistan, reports often emerged of US forces being outranged, which was a primary reason that the Army developed the NGSW program’s core requirement for guns firing larger rounds that offer greater range and terminal ballistic performance. Concerns about adversary body armor were also a factor.
Here’s The Beef
CPT Trent’s research began with total combat weight. “The M4A1 comes in at around eight and a half pounds, which is somewhat lightweight but still somewhat heavy compared to rifles of old. The XM7, by comparison, comes in at 15.4 pounds.”
“The XM7 has a relatively short barrel length of 13 inches,” he added. “That’s actually an inch and a half shorter than the M4A1.”
However, the Army and SIG Sauer say the standard barrel length for the XM7 is 15.3 inches, which is longer than the 14.5-inch barrel on the M4A1. SIG does offer the MCX Spear with a 13-inch barrel.
It is also unclear how Trent arrived at the “combat weight” figure for the XM7. According to the Army, the rifle weighs 8.4 pounds unloaded with no accessories and 9.8 pounds with just the addition of a suppressor. A loaded 20-round magazine and the XM157 optic would further increase that weight, which, according to Trent’s research, must weigh in the neighborhood of 4.5 pounds.
The “most serious issue observed with the XM7 was barrel and rifle[ing] gouging occurring in all samples that had greater than 2,000 rounds through the system,” Trent said.
“It has to be said that 2,000 rounds through a rifle is generally, in the industry, considered to be a break-in period. However, approximately four inches from the muzzle … one inch behind the gas block, a scratch, or in some cases, a gouge is starting to form in the rifling of the system itself. This can lead to all kinds of problems with accuracy and safety.”
He also said that troops that took part in a live fire exercise ran low on ammunition and then ran out completely.
“I was able to observe … a combined arms live fire exercise, or company live fire for those who aren’t familiar,” Trent said. “The platoon I was tasked with observing was tasked to suppress the objective for the other two platoons of that company to then maneuver and provide effects on the battlefield.”
“Within 10 minutes, the platoon I observed was almost completely out of ammunition after starting the engagement. By 15 minutes, their ability to produce effective suppression had become almost zero,” Trent added. “This is after having taken spare magazines for the XM7 from radio operators, medics, platoon leadership, etc.”
The Army and SIG Sauer Reaspond
Jason St. John, senior director of strategic products for the Defense Strategies Group at Sig Sauer, and Joshua Shoemaker, the company’s defense product manager for rifles and suppressors, reacted to CPT Trent’s findings and had a rebuttal statement.
St. John, a retired SFC and Ranger, said that Trent had not consulted the Army program office or Sig Sauer as part of the work on his thesis. Sig Sauer did meet with Trent on the sidelines of Modern Day Marine to discuss his findings.
“I believe that Captain Trent had some shortcomings and difficulties in understanding the totality of the NGSW program and some significant blind spots into the progress that the NGSW program has made over the last let’s call it 24 months.
“By him not having any clarity on any of the engineering change proposal efforts, and understanding of the 101st [Airborne Division’s] fielding efforts, the actual pacing of the program … and really the ongoing product improvement efforts that the program office and Sig Sauer are doing in concert with each other, really clouded his perspective, and I believe his opinions that he represented,” St. John said.
“There are significant misrepresentations and holes in those statements that he made.”
“It operates in the 77K PSI range, which is higher than legacy ammunition pressures,” St. John explained, rebutting Trent’s claim that pressure was operating over 80,000 PSI.
“Legacy ammunition pressures average, let’s just call it about 65K PSI. We can go plus three, minus three, we can go actually minus 10, depending on the cartridge. But the benefit of the technology of the Sig Sauer hybrid ammunition is the ability for that ammunition and the development of this weapon system to operate at higher pressures, so that you can get a higher level of performance out of a smaller weapon system.”
St. John added that the XM7 had been tested to operate with chamber pressures up to 125,000 PSI safely and said that any claim that the gun’s chamber pressure might present risks to the shooter was “patently false.” He also said he was unaware of any case rupturing since Sig Sauer first developed the ammunition before the NGSW program was even formalized but did not deny the possibility.
The Army and SIG will have to work out the bugs that occur with any new weapon. Training will have to change as well, with carrying less ammunition. That was part of the mission statement, where the Army said the XM7 would require less ammunition than the M-4.
In Cappy Army’s video as shown above, he said there were as many positive comments as negative ones, but those weren’t added to CPT Trent’s thesis.
About the Author:
Steve Balestrieri is a 19FortyFive National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing for 19FortyFive, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications
