Soldiers Give the Army’s New Rifle Optic Low Ratings
BY Herschel Smith
1 month ago
A 1-8×30 variable magnification direct view optic built by Vortex Optics subsidiary Sheltered Wings, the XM157 incorporates advanced technologies such as a laser rangefinder, aiming lasers, environmental sensors, ballistic solver, compass and a digital display overlay, all of which are designed to “increase the probability of hit and decrease the time to engage” with a computerized assist, according to the Army’s fiscal 2025 budget request.
The XM157 also features wireless connectivity that will purportedly allow it to integrate with heads-up displays like the Army’s current Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular, or ENVG-B, and future Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, do-it-all goggles, allowing soldiers to survey the battlefield from cover using a live video feed from their weapon optic.
“The XM7 with mounted XM157 demonstrated a low probability of completing one 72-hour wartime mission without incurring a critical failure,” the Operational Test and Evaluation report adds.
Despite the documented issues detailed in DOT&E report, the Army is still plowing ahead …
But of course they are.
Hmm, let’s see. A brand new ceramic cartridge with essentially no real logistical chain to speak of, chambers that will now see 85,000 psi, and a new optic that can’t go three days in the field without malfunctions.
Well, maybe some general got rich off of this boondoggle.
I’ve told y’all what we need to do, and I think most of you agreed. Issue fighters a range finder, get a decent LPVO and spend a lot of range time, switch over the barrel and BCG in existing M4s to 6mm ARC (and for heaven’s sake, ditch the 14″ barrel and use an 18″ barrel), and use Amend2 magazines because in my experience they work well with 6mm ARC.
Now see there, I didn’t even make millions of dollars fixing the problems for you.
Get a decent LPVO, switch over the barrel and BCG in existing M4s to 6mm ARC (and for heaven's sake, ditch the 14" barrel and use an 18" barrel), and use Amend2 magazines because in my experience they work well with 6mm ARC.https://t.co/ViFili9aMq
— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) February 12, 2025
On February 12, 2025 at 12:23 am, Beast5 said:
The weak link isn’t the rifle, round, barrel length, or gadgets. It is quality and quantity of training and ammunition. Buying a fix is an American red herring. There is no fix but hard work on the range.
Barrel length- Hits to 300m. Past 300m, take cover, maneuver, or employ other weapons systems, i.e. machine guns, drones, main guns, fire or air support. Everyone in the world lives in a building and battlefields consistently devolve into rubble cities. Don’t carry a musket into a close quarters battle. Barrel length, weight, and gadgets matter when you have to clear a room and then do it again for 12 more hours.
Training-49 rounds twice a year doesn’t cut it. Start with 2000 rounds per Soldier annually and see if that gets 70% expert badges without cheating. Do 40 iterations of live fire shoot houses annually and weed out the people who shouldn’t be in the military in the first place. Currently, there aren’t enough ranges to get that kind of throughput, so some actual effort would have to be applied to building new ranges. Apply the same logic to all the other weapons systems.
Ammo-Start producing 1MOA ammo instead of 4MOA bulk junk. There is already a huge logistical tail for the 5.56, and probably vast bunkers full of it. When WWIII starts, there will be no manufacturing or resupply because there will be no electricity. It’s a salvo competition down to the lowest rifleman.
And we’re just talking the future battlefield we think we can imagine.
On February 12, 2025 at 1:32 am, Big Country Expat said:
Something I talked about some time ago was the ‘combat round’ versus the ‘training round’
According to reports, the troops (if and when) would use a standard brass cased ‘training round’ which has a chamber pressure of about 50k psi, whereas, as you mentioned, the bi-metallic combat round has a chamber pressure of 85k psi.
BIG difference between training and combat
The ‘combat round’ (faaar more $$$) will hardly get used, and when and IF they deploy into the shit so to speak, the troops start firing the IRL 85k rounds, the recoil is going to be significantly harsher, thereby screwing up marksmanship.
Nevermind the male v female dynamic.
Chicks who can handle a 6.8 Fury Training Round will probably cry when they have to fire the ‘beast round’, never mind being able to hit the target….
Bad JuJu man…
On February 12, 2025 at 6:48 am, Joe Blow said:
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the perfumed princes of the potomac were TRYING to make our country weaker.
On February 12, 2025 at 8:09 am, Latigo Morgan said:
The elephant in the room is how busy that optic is, that it will take away from situational awareness.
While Pvt. Snuffy Smith is looking at all the gee-whiz stuff in his optic, the enemy can outflank him and take him out.
On February 12, 2025 at 1:56 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
The handy dandy XM157 may be able to do everything the infantryman wants, and bake a mean pecan pie, too – but did any of the geniuses over at DOD/Pentagon stop to consider how hazardous emitters of radiation are on today’s battlefields?
I’m just a pogue civilian, so I don’t know from nothing… but the reports I have seen suggest that one of the most-impressive capabilities of the new Russian Army, to name one example, is that it has managed to create a comprehensive sensor suite covering the battlefield, via drones, traditional aircraft, ground-based equipment, and so forth. And that these sensors are linked to sources of fire, i.e., artillery, rockets, mortars, kamikaze drones, etc. which are rapid response and can blanket the area.
The bottom line is that in certain areas well-covered by enemy sensors, it is courting death to emit radiation of any kind, whether visible, UV, IR, or whatever. So when Sam the Soldier lases a target with his fancy new XM157, he’s basically telling the enemy “Here I am!”
If even a portion of the reports about rapidly-advancing sensor tech are true, then it might indicate a return to more-traditional passive methods of RF may be in order.
And even if the XM157 laser is infra-red, all it takes is for the enemy to have standard NVGs, and they’ll be able to see the laser and trace it back to its source in real-time.
Sometimes, old school is the best way of doing things….
On February 12, 2025 at 10:08 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Leaving aside the possible technological detriments of the design, vis-a-vis emissions of detectable radiation, this whiz-bang toy is also emblematic of the Pentagon’s obsession with using high-tech, complex “solutions” – maybe we ought to call them pseudo-solutions – to problems which could just as easily be remedied using less costly, less complex fixes.
The best riflemen of the last century and a half (since the dawn of the era of smokeless powder), have performed amazing feats of marksmanship in the field using fairly basic tools, plus ample amounts of human creativity, resourcefulness and ingenuity.
In 1967, the now legendary U.S. Marine Corps scout-sniper, Carlos Hathcock, made what was then a record-setting 1.4 mile confirmed kill of a Vietcong guerilla using a Browning 50-caliber HBMG to which he and Marine armorers had added an Unertl 8x scope in a field-expedient mount. The record-setting shot, of about 2,500 yards, was taken from a hill-top at Duc Pho, RSV – and lasted for almost four decades as a world record before being surpassed in the Global War on Terror.
The late great Colonel John Boyd, one of the best military minds the United States has ever produced, constantly harped upon the fact that of the three domains in which war is contested, the moral, mental, and physical – the first two are by far the most-important. Boyd would add that the U.S. has since the Second World War, consistently chosen to emphasis the physical realm, in particularly high technology, at the expense of things which matter more.
Boyd was also famous for stating, “People, ideas and hardware – in that order!” This aphorism ties in with the first. People and ideas matter a great deal more to the successful conduct of war than hardware.
Phrased colloquially, a good man with so-so gear and equipment will consistently beat a so-so man with good equipment.
Hathcock and his fellow Marines who formed the cadre of the Vietnam-era Marine Corps scout-sniper program excelled and did great things not because they had the best, high-tech gear and equipment and biggest budgets; they had few of those things. They excelled and won because they embodied the traditional Corps excellence and determination to be the best, and because they refused to accept anything but the best in their performance.
The answers to the tactical problems facing the Army and Marine Corps in the 21st century lie not in expensive high-tech gizmos of the future like the XM157, but in the past and in the storied and honored traditions of great riflemanship of the kind Captain Jim Land and his men exemplified some sixty years ago. They were able to do the great things that they did because of their relentless training, quest for knowledge and tireless work in the field.
But then, building more rifle ranges and funding more training for our soldiers and Marines isn’t as sexy and exciting as throwing money at some new ‘Star Wars’ piece of gadgetry which is likely to malfunction the first time it gets wet or dirty or gets knocked around a bit.
On February 13, 2025 at 3:17 am, dave in pa. said:
more sweat in training means less blood in combat. old and true way of getting the job done and your ass back home. hi tech gear only works when you are the only one with it.
range time is the key. you train with what you going to fight with.
helped run a few ranges during my time with “Sam” and one thing always stood out.
the more ammo troops sent downrange , the better they got at it. it also why I can’t hear shit these days. but anyway. one time we had almost a 5 ton of 40mm ammo leftover after running the “group thru” and we HAD to shoot it all up. we got so good at lobbing them in with the M203 that we could hit just about anything out to 400 yards.
same deal with both the M-16 and M-60 we used up all the ammo we where given. troops got a chance to get a lot better with their weapons by doing that. 40-60 rounds a training trip? no. how about 100 rounds or more until he KNEW his weapon?
final thought. EVERYTHING BREAKS. the more it has, the more it going to break down when you NEED it. KISS always works or most of the time it does.
was part of the group testing the Carl G 84mm back in 1978. funny thing. it had iron sights to back up the optic ? so. yeah. they KNEW what they where making and who was going to use it. the army bought the Dragon system soon afterwards. funny thing.
watching the news in 2003-4 and seeing some SF guys talk about how wonderful and useful it is just kind of pissed me off even more. we could have had that back in 1980 easy. I guess they didn’t pay off the right generals ? you don’t hear or read much about the Dragon system these days. I guess after Gulf war one they realize what a load of crap it was. but it did cost more than the Carl G I do know that !
On February 13, 2025 at 11:29 am, george 1 said:
Just think of it as an F-35 type piece of equipment sitting on top of a rifle.
On February 13, 2025 at 6:36 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re:”Just think of it as an F-35 type piece of equipment sitting on top of a rifle.”
Yeah, I get that. Actually, the analogy I though about was likening it to the digital fire control system on an Abrams MBT, but probably not much difference from a jet fighter, right?
I remain skeptical that anyone – Vortex Optics included – has solved well-enough the non-deterministic variables involved in LR and ELR combat shooting, such that the system can live up to the hype. Primarily, wind, but other variables as well.
But even if the XM-157 works as advertised, the military still ought to be training the heck out of those grunts using older, lower-tech methods. Why? In case the new ones break down, don’t work, or aren’t available.
Unfortunately, that’s the not the direction they’ve moving, if the reports I’ve seen are accurate. Is there any truth to the scuttlebutt that iron sights are no longer being taught in basic or boot camp? Just LPVO (low-power variable optics) and fixed-power optics such as Aimpoints or the ACOG.
On February 15, 2025 at 11:49 am, Beast5 said:
Long ago, Bill B said something like “Infantry are obsolete” and I have been pondering it since then. Applying that idea to this topic, I’ve come to the realization that the battle rifle in a major conflict is obsolete until the technology salvo competition is complete. For almost all conflict going forward, I suspect hiding from the unimaginable suite of sensors will be of major concern. That being said, we still have one foot in the Iraq/Afghanistan paradigm, and one in the future battles fantasy.
There will always be a need for self defense. The Army should adopt something akin to a ruggedized FN Five-Seven as 9mm is also ballistically archaic. Ditch the standard M16/M4 and exchange it for rapidly deployable autonomous micro drone swarms or RAPDAMODS™️. Past 100m, depoly the autonomous drones and the crew served weapons. We’re back to salvo competition where billions of tiny drones will hunt any living flesh on the battlefield.
On February 16, 2025 at 10:26 am, Bill Buppert said:
New WarNotes Podcast episode is live Monday 17 February 2025.
Ep 013 “End of an Era: The Infantry Folds Its Colors”
The age of the infantry is over after a thousands-year long reign in human warfare and conflict.
On February 18, 2025 at 12:39 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Bill Buppert
Re: “The age of the infantry is over after a thousands-year long reign in human warfare and conflict.”
I will try to catch the podcast; it sounds like an interesting one. But in case I am unable to do so, do you mind a question or two?
Is it perhaps premature to write the obituary for the humble footslogging infantryman? The developments on 21st-century battlefields have certainly made his life more hazardous, i.e., the ubiquity of UAVs and drones, comprehensive ISR, etc. But don’t these emerging technologies argue for the development of air superiority UAVs and drones to regain control of the air over the battlefield?
Phrased differently, if the know-how now exists to design and build a cheap and effective anti-infantry drone whose mission is to hunt/kill enemy infantry in the open, then shouldn’t it also be possible to design and build an affordable “anti-anti-infantry” drone, whose job is to protect those same men on the ground by knocking out enemy UAVs?
Until artificial intelligence is mature-enough to take over from human minds in the waging of war, it seems premature to declare the infantryman dead and buried. Up to this point in history, no military technology has yet existed for which there has not been developed an effective counter-measure.
A paradigm change which is arguably just as consequential as the rise of UAVs and drones is the gradual removal of humans from the decision-making chain involved in the waging of war and the taking of human life. As advanced as technology has gotten, there has always been someone someplace, a human being, involved in the so-called “kill decision,” but for how much longer will this be the case?
What this monumental change portends for the future of warfare and conflict is certainly open for debate and interpretation, but it promises to be very big whatever it is that shakes out.