Recently it became known that the first unit of the US Army — it is about the soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the 506th Infantry Regiment, which is part of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, received “rifles and machine guns of the next generation” in preparation for training on new equipment.
This is the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program, which started back in 2017 and involved finding a replacement for the legendary M4 assault rifle and M249 machine gun, as well as a new cartridge for this weapon and fire control system.
The winner of this program was Sig Sauer with the Sig M7 rifle and the M250 machine gun, which was announced in April 2022. Sig Sauer's competitors were General Dynamics Ordnance & Tactical Systems and Textron Systems.
Then an initial contract was signed for $20.4 million for approximately 40 units — 25 M7 rifles and 15 M250 machine guns, some of which were used to develop the production line. At the same time, in general, the agreement covers 10 years and 4.7 billion dollars, for which approximately 250 thousand units of weapons can be purchased. At the same time, it remains unknown how many rifles and machine guns the 1st battalion received.
The delivery of this weapon to the US Army is a very important event for the military, because it is the first time in sixty years that the American military receives a completely new small arms with a new caliber of ammunition — it is about 6.8×51 mm (.277 Fury), which provides better characteristics compared to 5.56×45 mm, notes The War Zone.
As previously noted in the US Army, the new weapons should significantly increase accuracy, range and overall lethality “They are light, fire more lethal ammunition, reduce recoil, provide better barrel characteristics”, — according to the military.
The path of this weapon to the US Army was quite difficult, more than 25,000 hours were invested in the development and testing of NGSW systems by US military personnel, and as recently as 2019, the Army hoped to receive new weapons in 2022 year, but later the deadlines were postponed due to delays with the selection of the final design.