M-7 dropped from testing program
As we’ve previously discussed, the Army decided they needed a more-lethal, longer-range round – too many firefights in Afghanistan where we were outranged, they say. I can sorta see that – the M4/M16 family uses a pretty short-legged cartridge in the 5.56. It’s better than it was in the old days, when a 55 grain bullet and slower rifling twist limited its effective range(460 meters according to what the drill sergeants beat into us!) but still falls short at the 700 meter area.
Now, I hope someone can explain – I keep seeing articles comparing our rounds to the enemy’s – but they always compare apples and oranges. Seems I never see peer-to-peer comparisons, like between our 5.56 and their 5.45, but always comparing our rifles to their machine guns. Which begs the question of shouldn’t we be comparing theirs to 7.62 NATO? Especially when we’re spending billions on the M7 family. The new 6.8 (think of it as a rimless .270 on steroids) is impressive – but are we answering a question only being peripherally asked? More knowledgeable folks than I can answer that better. But back to the M7:
The Army’s new generational replacement for the M4-style rifles that infantry soldiers have carried into battle for nearly 50 years will receive less independent and real-world testing after it was taken off a Pentagon oversight list.
The M7 is part of the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon program that will replace the service’s M4 carbine. The service officially designated the M7 as its new rifle in May, announcing that it met “stringent standards for operational performance, safety, and sustainment.”
Now, the rifle’s removal from oversight by a Pentagon-level office tasked with conducting tests that are independent from the Army is getting heat from a federal watchdog.
Greg Williams, a lead defense analyst for the Project on Government Oversight, said that between May and August, the Department of Defense Test & Evaluation office, DOT&E, dropped 99 programs from the list of programs it oversees — including the M7 rifle.
DoT&E was created after a weapons introduction debacle… the M-16: It didn’t require cleaning, it wouldn’t jam, etc. – but it did. And cost lives in Vietnam. What DOT&E does is operational testing, to see how a weapon works in the REAL world, not a testing lab. We’re cutting the ammo load-out for Joe Snuffy by a third – is he going to run dry? The round works at 80,000+ psi pressure, which in sporting rifles would guaranteed cause premature barrel erosion. Will the 6.8?
Without that DoT&E oversight, Williams argues that the weapon won’t get enough testing that puts the gun through realistic combat scenarios or has oversight by an agency outside of the Army.
“For meaningful operational testing to occur, it must be overseen and evaluated by a party independent of the Army and the rifle’s manufacturers,” Williams told Task & Purpose. “Just doing the tests isn’t enough. You wouldn’t let a student take an exam and then grade their own test, would you?”
A defense official said that M7 fire control assessments were dropped from the oversight list in July after “extensive” operational tests completed by the Army between October 2023 and 2024 — which were observed by DOT&E personnel. The official said DOT&E completed “associated reporting to inform fielding and full-rate production” and fulfilled a Congressional requirement with its Early Fielding Report published in June.
The decrease in Pentagon testing oversight comes months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth axed more than half of the office’s staff.Task and Purpose
Guess we will find out the usual hard way – in soldier’ lives. Think I exaggerate? Let’s see, the Army went to copper-cased .45 rifles – ask Custer how well they worked. They changed to .38s which didn’t kill Moros. They brought in the M16 and had to make a host of changes to make it a worthwhile weapon as our kids suffered with it. Then there are systems like the Sergeant York, or etc. etc. etc. Guess I am old fashioned – I’d a lot rather that a guy in a testing lab find the warts on a weapon, not my kid.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army
The SCAR enters the chat.
I’d sorta like to see a military test take on the SFAR, myself.
Hey, there’re AR platforms in 7.62 NATO… a new M4 variant (just lengthen the magazine well and make a 30rd mag for it) just requires a CDD annex. (I’d carry the added weight in rounds.) Problem solved.
Agreed. The added weight is worth it and not enough to matter that much (when it really matters)
M7… well, here we go again:
Don’t be ridiculous, it needs to be suppressed.
Suppressed? Beyond 300m? Why?
Hearing protection, extra concealment. At 300 meters it is an even better idea. They are likely to notice you more close up.
I see nothing wrong with the venerable 308 myself.
Or even an off-the-shelf 270.
Distance?…check.
Knock down power?….check.
Tolerable chamber pressure?…..check.
COTS weaponry and ammunition?….check
So which Kongress Kritter + arms/ammunition manufacturer would benefit mostest from this chase for the unicorn? Follow the money, boys and girls, follow the money.
At a case length of 64mm, the OTS .270 Win is way too long.
I like the idea of a hot, compact 6.8 cartridge but this is a little too spicy. You gotta train with the same ammo you fight with.
I’d opt for the 6.5 Grendel. 38mm case and you still get about 2000 ft/lbs of ME.
6.5 mags use the same STANAG 5.56 magazine body. Only a different follower and modified feed lips are required.
Nothing wrong with the M-1 Garand which served well in WW2 and the Korean conflict…The Marine BLT’s we used to have onboard my ship and carried the M-14 and a stranger to the Garand when we shot them off of the fantail while underway.
Sigh….
Does anyone in the Army train to shoot beyond 300m? Might that lack of distance practice explain why the Army can’t get 500m hits, but competitors at Camp Perry and other “service rifle” routinely hit a 6-inch x-ring at 600 yards? Hmmm?
Yes, match tuned rifles and ammo. So match tune some service rifles and issue. Offer extra pay for someone who can repeatedly shoot expert, plus successfully qualify on an “extended distance” range out to 500m.
And yes, I used to use an HBAR AR-15 in Service Rifle matches and a memorable trip to Camp Perry when everyone else but one other nut were using .30 cal / 7.62, not 5.56.
No whoopeegun/magibullet combo is going to magicky allow engaging beyond common practice range.
That is part of the problem. The sweet spot for 5.56 is at around 150M. It starts to lose effectiveness in one shot stopping past that point. So if you want one shot stops at 500M with a little more reliability, than a bigger round is needed. The poor old obsolete (sarc) 7.62X51 will work but there are too many of them in stock and available with proven off the shelf weapons. Plus they have billions of rounds in production so that will never do. We need something that contractors can charge a bit extra for. After all, those vacation homes aren’t going to buy themselves.
None of that matters if an “expert” can miss all four 300m shots in a 40 round course of fire, and no one ever trains past 300m.
The A-2s were equipped with decent sights for distance work. But if you never fire at 600m, you are not going to put enough elevation on to hit. Or enough hold-over. Nor allow for wind.
Sure, 7.62 is “better”. A .338 even moreso. Hand Joe “Marksman” an M-14 and he will miss just as bad as with an M-4 or M-16. Even a notional “Expert” isnt hitting at 500+ without real practice. If you don’t train to hit at distance, you won’t hit at distance.
Training produces hits. No magic boomstick is going to fix the need for training.
9 for zero and 40 to qualify, twice a year, and burn off any surplus in “night fire” ain’t going to get there.
It matters because the weapon isn’t very effective at that range, so why bother? The army doesn’t train with the M18 at a hundred meters either. New training can embrace the capabilities of the weapon.
If I can even see a target at 500 M I am not going to waste my time and ammunition trying to shoot it, for a number of reasons. First, I do not want to give my position away; secondly, no one I ever served with could reliably hit anything at that range, so why bother? Third, that’s why God invented artillery, mortars, and air strikes.
I have used both M-14 and M-16. I like the M-14 better, but if I go into combat I would rather have an M-16. In my unit in RVN we carried 20+ magazines of rifle ammunition as a basic load. Just the thought of carrying that much M-14 ammo makes me tired; not just the weight, but the space required makes it infeasible. And, having once been in a situation where we ran short on ammo and weather and terrain prevented even a Medevac flight, much less ammo resupply or gunship/air support, I really really really like the idea of being able to carry lots of ammo (My pucker factor is still a bit elevated).
Do you think you could see it with an 0-8x optic? If you can’t hit a man sized target with an 8X optic at 600 meters you really shouldn’t be on the battlefield. Because that is what the rifle comes equipped with as a default. 600M just isn’t that far with a scope and well within the capabilities of the round.
Be that as it is, I am not sure where the idea of picking and choosing what you are going to shoot in combat comes from. It certainly a reflection of what the military does.
” you really shouldn’t be on the battlefield.”
Fine with me.
How good are those scopes on moving targets? I have difficulty believing that the enemy will be standing around in the open even at 600 meters, even assuming that you have that much visibility. And, as I said, for a couple of reasons I would call in artillery at that distance; much more effective.
In my 20s, I shot Highpower with an HBAR in .223. The 600yd black is the widgth of the front sight post. I could see and hit it.
A good reason to do so at 500m, right now, is returning fire on a machine gun.
Civilians -routinely- compete with service rifles at 600 yards (~540m). Sure “tuned”. But any “distinguished expert” shooter could hit a standing man at 500m with issue weapon and ammo. Yes, they are using. 223/5.56.
It’s the training, not the weapon.
While running a rifle range about 5 years ago, a gent was shooting a scoped CZ .22LR target rifle at a 200yd 6 inch gong. Bench rest, sandbag front and back, dozens of brands of ammo, seeking the best for 100 and 200 yards.
He offered me to try it. I picked it up, asked if it was point of aim at 200, and proceeded to fire it standing, unsupported.
Piff! TOK! He called “Hit. 2.5 low and centered”. Do it again. ”
Held 2.5 high. Piff! TOK!
“DANG! Just left and level.”
“It shoots a little low for me.” (Smirk)
Nice gun. (Thanks again, Pop, for teaching me how to shoot.)
There is no reason current soldiers, shooting current M4s, cannot engage stationary man sized targets at 500m right now, other than idiots refuse to expend the needed time and funds to train properly in rifle marksmanship, including range estimation and wind effect estimation (“dope”).
That we fail to demand and provide this training is despicable.
” refuse to expend the needed time and funds to train properly in rifle marksmanship”
Amen. I have always contended that the Army spends too little time and money on marksmanship training. The myth that Americans are all expert marksmen in the tradition of Daniel Boone and Alvin York continues to thrive.
In competition, shooters fire weapons not only “match tuned” but with 20″ barrels and high enough twist rates to stabilize match ammo of 75 or 77 grains.
My National Match AR had a 20″ SS Bull barrel and I had almost two pounds of lead in the buttstock to balance it. It was an excellent shooter out to 600 yards with 77gr match ammo, but I wouldn’t want to carry the damn thing around a battlefield.
The “standard” infantry weapon these days is an M4 with a 14.5″ barrel.
5.56 loses quite a bit of energy with that loss in barrel length. SOCOM specifically designed the 6.8spc to overcome that shortcoming and achieve better performance with short barrels, but whether that translates into better long range performance, I don’t know.
Probably not, which is why they went with that newfangled 6.8 cartridge with ridiculous chamber pressures and overcomplicated case.
And if they put the magic bullets in another cut-down carbine, they will have similar problems. If they don’t train at distance, they won’t hit. If they optimize the weapon for CQB or “light and compact”, it won’t reach.
Perhaps the Army should learn from the game of golf; every rifleman will have a caddy who carries various weapons optimized for various ranges, like drivers for long shots and a 9 iron for short distances, and a shotgun as a putter for really short ranges.
Done. Anything else?
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/12/13/robots-in-the-ranks-army-integrating-robots-in-two-platoons/
What magic force limits the enemy to short range? Ever?
You can teach a man to hit 500m with existing M4 and ammo. Training does it. 3moa is about 18 inches at 600yd. That’s a torso hit. Is a good condition M4 with current ball a 3moa platform? Put a good barrel on it, take out the upper/lower slop, and clean up the trigger, and thst is more like 2 or 1.5.
No excuse. Train them, and watch how frigging cautious the enemy becomes, when we go back to being “riflemen”.
“What magic force limits the enemy to short range? Ever?”
Terrain, for one thing. And the fact that the enemy is not stupid and won’t stand around waiting for you to shoot them. Even at short ranges the folks you want to shoot at are hard to see since they move fast and hide behind trees, rocks, etc. And the fact that they usually shoot back tends to make things a bit more difficult.
RE: Custer, One could argue if they had bought the brass cased 45-70-500 ammo and the magazine fed 1873 instead of the single shot it would have been a turkey shoot and a short day. The natives were mostly armed with BP weapons and even one of the last appearances of the bow and arrow.
45-70 is super effective inside 500 yards and having five reliable shots until reload would have had the tribe badly outgunned. It is hard to say for sure though. Superior weaponry can make up for terrible tactics, but not always.
The Winchester 1873 could not fire .45-70 rounds due to its overall cartridge length: 2.1″ case length and overall cartridge length: 2.55″. The receiver was not long enough to cycle it. The 1876 Winchester had the same problem, it that it could not take any overall case length longer than a .45-60 round: case length 1.89″, Overall cartridge length: 2.15″. It was not until the Winchester 1886, that Winchester finally had a lever action rifle that could take the .45-70. The only lever action rifles available, excluding the Spencer of Civil War fame, were chambered in pistol caliber rounds. Although the advantage of Lever Action Rifle in a Pistol caliber, would have given Custer a lot more firepower.
My bad, should have been specific. Springfield 1873 trap door was what was used by the 7th Cav. Chambered in 45-70 for infantry and 45-55 for the cavalry.
There was an experimental model that was fitted with a tubular magazine that the army looked at for consideration and then decided it wasn’t reliable enough.
If Custer’s Cav were armed with .44-40 Win 1873’s it would have been a short day.
Even Spencer’s would have made a difference if every trooper had one.
It sorta defies common sense why Cav weren’t given repeaters. Hard enough to fire and reload a single from horseback
Because the idiots of Ordinance of the day didn’t want the men “wasting” ammunition.
None of whom apparently were expected to go near a hostile, personally. Hmm.
Because they lacked the wagons to move enough ammo to feed repeaters. Hmmm.
Because “blame the men” is the old tradition to cover the asses of ranking nincompoops.
The men in Vietnam did not fail to clean their new M16s. They were told it wasn’t necessary, and thus were not issued the many needed cleaning kits. Thus the ones for the machine gunner had to do, assuming enough time. And figuring out how to downsize for 5.56.
Not chroming the bores, to save money, was stupidity squared.
Those were some of the reasons. Another reason was because they were peeking at what the European Armies were fielding in that day.
France = Mle 1874 Gras
UK = Martini-Henry
Belgium = M1870 Belgian Comblain
Dutch = M1871 Beaumont
Austro- Hungary = Werndl-Holub
Prussia/Germany = Gewehr 71
Etc. So most everyone was fielding a breech loading single shot metallic cartridge rifle about 3-4′ long. This was carried over from the old black powder rifles. Military brass never wants to be too different than everyone else, otherwise they could get blamed if things go wrong.
The Spanish were a rare exception, with cavalry units fielding repeating 1873 Winchesters in .44-40. But everyone considered Spain to be a second rate military power at the time, even though they were doing it right.
It wasn’t until the box magazine fed Mauser Action rifle came along in the Gehwer 1888 that people took notice and decided that being able to shoot fast and accurately mattered. After that everyone adopted Mauser bolt action rifles (or copies of the same) for decades until WWII rendered them obsolete with the release of the semi-autos (Garand, SVT40, G43 etc.)
They also discovered how dumb mag cut offs were on a repeater
“Because the idiots of Ordinance of the day didn’t want the men “wasting” ammunition.”
Still a valid concern. Which is why the M4 cannot fire full automatic, only 3-4 round bursts at most.
Also significant is the exotic part stainless steel, part brass case required to handle that chamber pressure. Ammo will be ridiculously expensive. Since it will require completely different production line tooling, companies won’t be able to adapt existing production lines by simply changing dimensions. That translates to fewer suppliers during peace time and slower ramp up to add suppliers in war time.
One possibility is that at some future time the Army could be forced to acknowledge the logistical imperatives and switch to the same round with an all brass case operating in the same rifle at lower pressures and quietly drop the pretensions about needing range that they are unlikely to ever train soldiers for, and marginal increases in performance against body armor over what can be achieved by projectile design at lower velocities. But that would make too much sense, so it is not very likely to happen.
In my not so humble opinion, what it really comes down to is that when the Pentagon wants a new small arm, if it is in a niche that was or could be filled by a previous caliber, they could never get funding from Congress by admitting a mistake and reverting to the previous caliber. A new caliber is required to generate buzz for funding.
One is clearly more appetizing than the other.
The M-7 uses a two-part cartridge case to deal with the pressures involved. Then IIRC the Army was going to have two types of ammo for this rifle, training rounds with reduced velocity and pressures, and the designed round with its much, much higher pressures and different ballistics. So, to me that is two strikes against it right there. Because what happens when a case head separates from the case body in the middle of a firefight? And how confused will the troops be, when you have to re-zero the rifle every time you change ammo? And also perceived recoil between the two rounds just might rear its ugly head.
We had a perfectly good round to meet the requirements in the 7.62 NATO. But the Good Idea Fairies in the Pentagon just had to have a new round to go along with their new rifle, instead of just developing a new rifle in 7.62 X 51.
Notice that most of the Good Idea Fairies in the Pentagon
aren’t involved leading troopers into battle. Maybe they have stocks in the arms industry. and it’s the moola shmoola that they are interested in.
I hope they would issue a broken shell extractor with it.
I had my own 5.56 extractor and a .308 one that worked on any Mauser derived case
Task & Purpose is hardly the most reliable or rigorous military news site.
I’d prefer to see the actual test data thus far than the bias of “Greg Williams, a lead defense analyst for the Project on Government Oversight.”
No close-range gear? JUNK
this
Got one at home. 😄
Bayonet is not long enough!
The .270 is already rimless. Just a necked down ’06 case
Yeah, brain farted there. Very true.
The M16 gained support because the Joes in Nam said the M14 was too heavy and unwieldy (too long) in the Jungle environment. To support that issue a Jungle is not a long range engagement environment. Cutting weight in both the rifle and ammo was an added bonus.
There are PLENTY of rounds in various calibers already in use that hunters use to take game at ranges that frankly most are not skilled enough to actually justify taking the shot.
The current thinking is that we “must” maintain the lightweight rifle and ammo to allow soldiers to be able to move and carry enough rounds for an extended firefight. I think we’ve gotten all we can out of the small frame rifle (ie 5.56 size / length cartridge) and it’s time to figure on a new design.
To my way of thinking I could see using something like the 25 caliber bullet chambered in a .308 case to have plenty of “leg” to get out to the proper range. Making it the same cartridge for light MG’s would keep logistics chains happier as well.
I got a really bad feeling reading the ballistics on the new experimental round. 80,000 PSI is well above what is fielded by any force around the world. I am not so worried about barrel erosion as I am about fouled chambers sticking cases in the gun or burst chambers. Handloaders understand the diminishing returns of stuffing more powder into a case and getting little increase in velocity. To me the Army and the wiz kids pushing the ultra high pressure round are well into no no land for reliability and safety. I would be very reluctant to use that round in any aluminum framed rifle.
This discussion of how the M7 works when tested by troops wouldn’t have anything to do with the Program Manager making his CGSC Thesis available to read by everyone would it? You know, since all the bad things that troops identified and wanted fixed were ignored by the Generals in their discussions!
https://meta-defense.fr/en/2025/05/06/fusil-dassaut-xm7-us-army-rapport/
sorry did not realize the French call the 101st the Streaming Eagle…not sure if the article is AI or just the writer, it seems to have been purloined from someplace real.
The first thing that struck me is how the heck do you clean that thing? It’s got more nooks and crannies than a Thomas’s English Muffin.
M-14A and M1 Garand would make cool license plates.
As long that there isn’t a thumb sticking out of it
With the advent of drone warfare, you need to have lots of soldiers carrying shotguns
Goose hunting.