It’s official: US Army’s improved M8 rifle to begin fielding in December

NEWINGTON, N.H. – On the factory floor at gun maker Sig Sauer’s headquarters, giant shipping pallets of the brand-new M8 Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle sit shrink-wrapped on shelves, ready for dispatch to soldiers.

Fielding of the M8 carbine, which appears set to replace Sig Sauer’s M7 as the Army’s standard rifle less than three years after the M7’s initial fielding began, will begin in December with some units at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, company executives confirmed to Military Times Monday.

The NGSW new weapons rollout also includes Sig’s M250 machine gun, which will replace the aging M249 Squad Automatic Weapon and is expected to reach troops in the first half of next year, said Dave Buehler, the company’s vice president of manufacturing.

Both weapons share an ammunition caliber: the 6.8×51mm Common Cartridge developed by Sig Sauer with a hybrid design intended to withstand high chamber pressure.

The M7 stumbled out of the gate, generating complaints from soldiers about its unwieldy weight and length and undue wear they said the high-pressure rounds were putting on components, including barrels and suppressors.

While Sig Sauer pushed back at the time on a number of the most strident complaints, the company is now casting the transition from the M7 to the M8, also previously called the XM8, as a success story that highlights its ability to act quickly on soldier inputs.

“From our perspective [the M8 is] a far superior rifle to the M7,” Buehler said. “On the M7, our hands were kind of tied [with what] the design criteria or characteristics of the contract required – even if we didn’t like them, we had to meet them. So now, the M8 considers our feedback, the soldiers’ feedback. And we can’t wait to get it out there.”

The new rifle is more than a pound lighter than the M7 and sports a barrel that’s 3.5 inches shorter. It replaces a less-popular folding stock with a fixed stock and includes feedback-based adjustments like added rigidity for the handguard. For soldiers who previously received the M7 rifle, the M8 should be a smooth transition, said Josh Shoemaker, Sig Sauer’s product manager for defense.

“The fundamentals are all the same, really,” Shoemaker told Military Times in an interview. “If guys that have had the M7 already are pretty familiar with that, the M8 will be a well-received transition.”

The foremost design challenge, he said, was achieving weight reduction from the M7, which weighed more than eight pounds unloaded, and nearly 10 pounds with the included suppressor – a radical difference from the legacy M4A1 carbine, which weighs 6.34 pounds unloaded.

Shoemaker said Sig Sauer had reduced the weight difference between the M4 and M8 to a little less than a pound, though that doesn’t include the M8’s suppressor.

“We worked really hard to reduce weight where we could and where it matters. So there’s lots of lightening cuts around the receiver. We pulled some weight out of the barrel, but we’re very careful to do that, because a lot of times when you pull weight out of the barrel, you have risks of some performance decreasing, whether that be barrel life or cook-off,” Shoemaker said. “We’re very sensitive to that, so it’s a long process to be able to figure out where your left and right limit is and how much weight [you can] kind of pull off of that before it’s too much.”

Reducing barrel size and thus altering the weapon’s center of gravity helped in that effort, Shoemaker said.

“When you pick up that M8, the balance of it feels a lot better, with that suppressor being on a shorter weapon system,” he added.

As for the M7, budget documents released earlier this year show the Army is curtailing its procurement , with none additional requested for Fiscal Year 2027 and about 50,000 previously delivered to the force.

The Army hasn’t said what it plans to do with the M7s already in inventory, particularly if it opts to put M8s in the hands of all troops who previously got the M7.

Shoemaker said there were “tons of options” for the Army with regard to M7s, including sending the weapons to basic training units or reassigning them to Guard or Reserve units.

But there’s another option, he said: the Army could ask for conversion kits to turn all the M7s already in its inventory into M8 carbines.

“The barrel is two screws that come out, and the hand guard is two more screws … the lower-end serialized item is the same,” he said. “All in, you could probably convert [an M7 to an M8] in under five minutes.”

If that’s an option Army leaders are considering, they have yet to address it publicly.

“There’re lots of options that the Army is well aware of,” Shoemaker said, “and making decisions on what direction they’ll go with that.”

新罕布什尔州纽因顿——在枪支制造商西格绍尔总部工厂车间里，巨大的运输托盘上摆放着全新的 M8 下一代班用武器步枪，它们用收缩膜包裹着，放在货架上，准备发往士兵手中。

M8卡宾枪的列装工作将于12月开始，一些部队将在北卡罗来纳州布拉格堡率先装备该枪。该公司高管周一向《军事时报》证实了这一消息。M7卡宾枪的列装工作似乎将在不到三年后取代西格绍尔M7卡宾枪，成为美国陆军的标准步枪。

西格公司制造副总裁戴夫·布勒表示，NGSW 新武器的推出还包括西格的 M250 机枪，该机枪将取代老旧的 M249 班用自动武器，预计将于明年上半年交付部队。

这两款武器使用相同的弹药口径：由 Sig Sauer 开发的 6.8×51mm 通用弹药筒，采用混合设计，旨在承受高膛压。

M7 步枪一经推出便遭遇挫折，士兵们抱怨其笨重的重量和长度，以及高压子弹对枪管和消音器等部件造成的过度磨损。

尽管西格绍尔当时对一些最激烈的抱怨进行了反驳，但该公司现在将从 M7 到 M8（以前也称为 XM8）的过渡视为一个成功的故事，突显了其能够迅速响应士兵反馈的能力。

“从我们的角度来看，M8步枪比M7步枪要好得多，”布勒说。“在M7步枪的设计上，我们受到合同规定的设计标准和特性的束缚——即使我们不喜欢这些标准，也必须满足它们。所以现在，M8步枪充分考虑了我们的反馈，也考虑了士兵们的反馈。我们迫不及待地想把它推向市场。”

新款步枪比M7轻了一磅多，枪管也短了3.5英寸。它用固定枪托取代了不太受欢迎的折叠枪托，并增加了基于反馈的调整功能，例如增强了护木的刚性。西格绍尔公司国防产品经理乔什·舒梅克表示，对于之前使用过M7步枪的士兵来说，M8的过渡应该非常顺利。

“其实基本原理都一样，”舒梅克在接受《军事时报》采访时说。“如果已经用过M7的人对它很熟悉，那么M8对他们来说将是一个很容易接受的过渡。”

他表示，首要的设计挑战是减轻 M7 的重量，M7 空枪重量超过 8 磅，加上消音器后接近 10 磅——这与传统的 M4A1 卡宾枪（空枪重量为 6.34 磅）有着根本性的区别。

舒梅克表示，西格绍尔公司已将 M4 和 M8 之间的重量差异减少到不到一磅，但这还不包括 M8 的消音器。

“我们竭尽全力在关键部位减轻重量。因此，枪身周围有很多减重槽。我们也减轻了枪管的重量，但我们非常谨慎，因为很多时候减轻枪管重量会带来性能下降的风险，比如缩短枪管寿命或导致自燃，”舒梅克说道。“我们对此非常重视，所以需要经过漫长的过程才能确定左右两侧的减重极限，以及在减重过多之前可以减掉多少重量。”

舒梅克说，减小枪管尺寸，从而改变武器的重心，有助于实现这一目标。

“当你拿起那把 M8 时，你会感觉它的平衡性好得多，因为消音器安装在一个更短的武器系统上，”他补充道。

至于 M7 步枪，今年早些时候公布的预算文件显示，陆军正在缩减采购规模，2027 财年没有提出任何额外的采购请求，此前已向部队交付了约 5 万支。

陆军尚未说明将如何处理库存中的 M7 步枪，特别是如果选择将 M8 步枪配发给所有之前装备 M7 步枪的部队。

舒梅克表示，对于M7步枪，陆军有很多选择，包括将这些武器送到基础训练部队或重新分配给国民警卫队或预备役部队。

但他表示，还有另一种选择：陆军可以要求提供改装套件，将库存中的所有 M7 步枪改装成 M8 卡宾枪。

“枪管是两颗螺丝拧下来的，护木也是两颗螺丝拧下来的……低端序列号的型号也一样，”他说。“总而言之，你大概五分钟之内就能把M7改成M8。”

如果这是陆军领导人正在考虑的选项，他们尚未公开表态。

舒梅克说：“陆军很清楚有很多选择，他们正在决定将朝哪个方向发展。”