Armed Forces Journal editor likes the XM8 rifle

01 MAR 04 edition. Army Times. John G. Roos.

John Roos, Editor of the Armed Forces Journal, was one of the first shooting enthusiasts to put the XM8 to the test, before the Army closed the testing to the press. He found eight things he thinks we'll like about the potential new US service rifle.

He also has a couple of suggestions for improvement.

And there are links to multiple videos.

The article mentions the possible addition of a monitoring device. ACE has learned Accu-Counter is being considered for this purpose. It's time/date shot monitor records the time and date of every shot. This info, coupled with the electronic serial number, can be retrieved from the rifle to a handheld or personal computer via an IR signal.

The Army apparently read the comments of many of us, or just came to the same conclusion. It issued a sole-source, non-competitive requirement to H&K to redesign the XM8 to provide manual backup sights, among other things.

For a review of the article about the XM8 in the Feb Edition of Soldier of Fortune, with illustrations and stats, see this earlier ACE post.

For more ACE posts on the XM8 and the 6.8mm round, click on the Weapons & Firearms category in the right sidebar.

XM8 variants, from the HK USA site

Optional Reading: ACE comments:

The 12.5 inch barrel version (which is most likely to be the service version, if adopted) strikes me as optimized for close quarter battle (CQB). [If we're going to have a rifle with a 12.5 inch barrel, we might as well use an even smaller shell, as we're just wasting powder. The 9 inch carbine barrel is a joke. Might as well fire 9mm pistol rounds out of that.] The 20 inch barrel versions are far better ballistically speaking, but have no advantage over the M16 in terms of size, which is one of the justifications for adoption of the XM8. It's a whiz-bang modular system with more style and flexibility than the H&K G36 upon which it is based, mechanically. But, we have to ask ourselves if our freedom and security is best served with most of our troops armed with a "spray and pray" assault weapon which might be closer to an Uzi than a M14. Since muzzle velocity and terminal ballistics will be severely compromised, troops equipped with it will be at a disadvantage vs. terrorists armed with AK-47s at greater than 100 yards or so. If it is issued with the 5.56mm round, it will not address the take-down problems experienced with that round, which our troops have complained about since Somalia. [The rifling and round used in Vietnam was more likely to induce tumbling, which would do significant internal exit wound damage, and not just leave a non-bleeding ice-pick hole, which would not stop an opponent unless it hit a major organ, artery, or bone. But "improvements'' since, while improving in-air ballistics, have hurt terminal ballistics. As a result, we've resorted to using match ammo - which fragments, in violation of the Hague Convention - against terrorists. We can only hope they don't return the "favor."] At least it does have the ability to field-change barrels, enabling the use of larger rounds such as the new 6.8mm Remington SPC, and longer barrels in the sharpshooter version. The videos show the weapon is easy to field strip and clean, is modular, has a high-tech sight, can fire even when wet or dirty, and has a nifty grenade launcher. Now we need to see some terminal ballistics data at different ranges for the different lengths of barrels.

The primary purpose of a rifle is to reliably and rapidly deliver bullets on target with "terminal" energy. If the some variant of the XM-8 can better do that at all the ranges our troops are likely to encounter in this and future wars, then it is worth the high cost of a general service rifle conversion.

Ironically, as mentioned in an earlier ACE post, the XM-8 is based on the H&K G36 workings, which in turn was based on the AR18 (with its piston instead of gas tube). Rifle development has been a slow evolution (with lots of borrowing) during this century.