Okay, we just went on and on about the history of the U.S. service rifle and the adoption of the XM8.
Aren't we going to say anything about the new XM250 Automatic Rifle?
Well, the first thing we'll say is that it isn't an "automatic rifle". The Army doesn't have an "automatic rifle"
It's a light machinegun.
Okay, other than being super snarky, what's up with that comment, and the XM250.
SIG Sauer photograph of the XM250.
In this instance, let's start with desscribing what the XM250 is.
It's a 6.8x51 light belt fed machinegun of conventional design, but advanced materials, which will replace the M249 "Squad Automatic Weapon" in the Army. The M249, in the "automatic rifle" role it is slotted in, is issued as follows:
In other words, a current U.S. Army rifle squad is led by a Staff Sergeant, and it is split into two subsquads, each led by a Sergeant.* The entire squad has only two privates,a nd four specialists. Each subsquad has one M203 grenade launcher, which is a M4/Grenade launcher combo, and one M249. The subsquads are really built around the M249.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, and maybe it should, it vaguely resembles the concept of the German Army of World War Two, which was based on rifleman support of the squad machinegunner. It's also vaguely similar to the US Marine Corps squad of World War Two, which also included two automatic riflemen by the war's end.
And now, yes, a little history. And yes, like many things here, we've dealt with this history here before.
Infantry squads, prior to 1917, were formed by lining men in a company up and counting them out into groups of eight men per squad. Each squad would have a corporal in charge of it and consist of eight men, including the commanding corporal. The corporal, in terms of authority, and in reality, was equivalent to a sergeant in the Army post 1921. I.e., the corporal was equivalent to a modern sergeant in the Army. He was, we'd note, a true Non-Commissioned Officer. This basic organization continued on through 1921, when thing were much reorganized. But the basic structure of the Rifle Company itself was about to change dramatically, in part due to advancements in small arms which were impacting the nearly universal identify of the infantryman as a rifleman.
Colorado National Guardsman with M1895 machinegun in 1914, at Ludlow Colorado.
Automatic weapons were coming into service, but how to use and issue them wasn't clear at first. The U.S. Army first encountered them in the Spanish American War, which coincidentally overlapped with the Boer War, which is where the British Army first encountered and used them. The US adopted its first machinegun in 1895. The 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, which fought as dismounted cavalry in Cuba during the Spanish American War, used them in support of their assault of Kettle Hill, although theirs were privately purchased by unit supporters who had donated them to the unit. The Spanish American and Boer Wars proved their utility however, and various models came after that. They were, however, not assigned out at the squad level, but were retained in a separate company and assigned out by higher headquarters as needed. There was, in other words, no organic automatic weapon at the company level, and certainly not at the squad level.
There also weren't a lot of them. Running up to World War One, the Army issued new tables of organization for National Guard units, anticipating large formations such as divisions. Even at that point, however, there were no automatic weapons at the company level at all. The infantry regiment table provided for a Machine Gun Company, which had a grand total of four automatic rifles.
M1909 "Machine Rifle". It was a variant of the Hotchkiss machinegun of the period and was acquired by the Army in very low quantities. Loved by other armies, the Ameican Army hated it.
Just four.
Most men in a Rifle Company were riflemen. Automatic weapons were issued to special sections. Most of the infantry, therefore that served along the border with Mexico during the Punitive Expection, just prior to the Great War, was leg infantry, carrying M1903 Springfield rifles, and of generally low rank. They didn't have much to do with machineguns.
New York National Guardsmen in Texas during the Punitive Expedition.
At that time, an infantry company had about 100 men, commanded by a captain who had a very small staff. The entire company, for that matter, had an economy of staff. Most of the men were privates, almost all of which were riflemen, and most of whose direct authority figure, if you will, was a corporal. There were few sergeants in the company, and those who were there were pretty powerful men, in context. There were some men around with special skills as well, such as buglers, farriers, and cooks. Cooks were a specialty and the cook was an NCO himself, showing how important he was. Even infantry had a small number of horses for officers and potentially for messengers, which is why there were farriers. And automatic weapons had started to show up, but not as weapons assigned to the company itself, and not in large numbers.
Running up to the war, however, the Army started to make massive changes in organization in order to contemplate largescale warfare in France. Those changes went down to the squad level. By the time the US committed to the Great War, an infantry platoon was composed of four sections comprised of grenadiers (hand grenades), rifle grenadiers, riflemen, and automatic riflemen. This organization is confusing to those familiar with later developments, as it resembled the later squad, on a much larger organizational scale. The basic organization was as follows:
4 Rifle Platoons per Company (1 Officer and 58 Enlisted each)
1 Platoon Headquarters
1× Platoon Commander, Lieutenant, armed with 1 pistol/revolver and no rifle, except in reality, he often carried a rifle.
1× Platoon Sergeant, Sergeant, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle and 1 pistol or revolver and no rifle, except. . . .
4× Runners, Private, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle, theoretically, but often armed with a M1911.
1 Hand Bomber (Grenadier) Section. Yes, a section of grenadiers.
3× Hand Bomber Teams of:
1× Team Leader, Corporal (2 teams) or Private First Class (1 team), armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle and, for Corporal team leaders, 1 pistol/revolver
1× Thrower, Private First Class, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle and 1 pistol/revolver
1× Scout, Private, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle
1× Ammo Man, Private, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle
1× Rifle Grenadier Section
3× Rifle Grenadier Teams of:
1× Team Leader, Corporal (2 teams) or Private First Class (1 team), armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle, 1 VB grenade launcher and, for Corporal team leaders, 1 pistol/revolver
1× Gunner, Private First Class, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle and VB grenade launcher
1× Ammo Man, Private, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle
1× Automatic Rifle Section
1× Section Leader, Sergeant, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle and 1 pistol/revolver
2× Automatic Rifle Squads of:
1× Squad Leader, Corporal, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle and 1 pistol/revolver
2× Automatic Riflemen [B], Private First Class, armed with 1 M1915 Chauchat automatic rifle [C] and 1 pistol/revolver each
4× Ammo Man, Private, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle each
1× Rifle Section
1× Section Leader, Sergeant, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle
2× Rifle Squads of:
1× Squad Leader, Corporal, armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle
7× Riflemen, Private First Class (3 men) or Private (4 men), armed with 1 M1903/M1917 rifle each
If that's a bit confusing, and outside of our normal experiences in this area, the weapons used may be more so. But to note, this large maneuver element was busted up and deployed as needed, but nowhere near on the downscale that we now find.
Going into the war, the US had two good fully automatic weapons, and one so/so one.
Model 1904 Maxim .30-06 machine guns in use by U.S. cavalrymen. Note that these cavalrymen also carry M1911 pistols. The cavalryman pointing is wearing a holster for the M1911 that was unique to cavalry, as it swiveled. The machine gun crewmen are wearing the general issue M1911 holster.
The first true machine gun used by the U.S. Army was John Browning's M1895. Manufactured in a variety of calibers and sold worldwide, in U.S. use it started off in .30-40 and in 6mm Navy Lee. In spite of the fact that the Army never officially adopted them, they showed up in use more often than a person might suppose as National Guard units often simply bought them, in a variety of calibers. During the Spanish American War two were given as gifts to the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry by family members of the unit, although oddly those were in 7x57, the cartridge used by Spain. The unofficial nature of this use in Army hands (Navy and Marine Corps use was official) meant that the gun was still in use in various units as late as 1917 when the United States entered World War one.
Machine gun troop in Mexico.
The M1895 was not a bad gun, but it was a very early gun, and it was clearly a pioneering, and therefore not fully satisfactory, weapon. It was delicate and prone to stoppages. The experience of the Spanish Civil War showed that another weapon would have to be found, as its operational rate fared poorly in comparison with the obsolete Gatlings.
Schematic of the Colt-Browing, "Potato Digger"
Fortunately, there was a ready alternative to the M1895 available, that being the Maxim gun.
M1904 Maxim in use in Texas in 1911.
The Maxim gun was a heavy machine gun designed by American-born Hiram Maxim. A visionary weapon, Maxim first introduced the gun in 1886, shortly after he had relocated to the United Kingdom. The heavy recoil operated gun would set the standard for heavy machine guns, a position which to some degree it still occupied. Maxim's gun came right at the end of the black powder era and because of the nature of its design it was suitable for any of the then existing cartridges as well as the smokeless cartridges that were just being invented. Indeed, the gun was so adaptable that some of the larger variants of it were really automatic cannons due to the virtue of their size.
The Army started testing the Maxim relatively early on, but it was slow to adopt it, perhaps in part as the Army had a hard time figuring out exactly how to deploy machine guns at first. Indeed, nearly every Army had difficulty in this department. In 1904, however, the Army adopted the Maxim as the Army's first machine gun. Production, however, was slow, with initial production taking place in the UK for weapons chambered in .30-03 and remaining production undertaken by Colt. Only 287 of the guns were made, but as the picture above shows, they were deployed along the border and they were very good guns. They were also extremely heavy, both because of the heavy weight of the action and because the gun was water cooled. For an introductory weapon, it was excellent, but the Army had already adopted a replacement by the time of the Punitive Expedition.
In the meantime, the Army was also experimenting with light machine guns and adopted a true light machinegun by 1909, as the M1909..
U.S. Troops firing the M1909 Benét–Mercié machine gun, a variant of the Hotchkiss light machine gun.
The entire story of the M1909 is an odd one, as the gun itself is a legendary weapon, one of the Hotchkiss machine guns. The Hotchkiss machine guns saw service around the globe and were generally well liked by most armies. The U.S. Army ended up not liking the gun. All in all, the M1909 acquired a bad reputation in the U.S. Army during the Punitive Expedition, even though reports of its use really don't support that feeling, and it was a better gun than the one that would go on to be used in the same role during World War One.
The US was also using the Lewis Gun, a truly excellent light machinegun, for the time, leading up to World War One.
The Lewis Gun was introduced by its designer around 1911 and received some use early on. Unfortunately for the Army, it seems that a dislike on the part of the chief of the Army of the inventor kept it from being adopted by the U.S. Army for a light machine gun, a decision that would have consequences during World War One. Given the nature of the times, however, the gun was picked up privately by at least one small National Guard unit that was funded heavily by a member, in an era when that sort of thing was still not uncommon. But Guard units did not cross the border, they only guarded it, during the Punitive Expedition. The gun would see heavy use by the British during World War One and on into World War Two, and by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, but not by the Army during the Great War, even though it was showing up in the Army prior to that.
Marine training with Lewis Gun
Indeed, during the Great War, the Army was armed with the Chauchat, which was a disaster.
The Chauchat was a French designed automatic rifle, not a light machinegun. Designed to be used automatically as its infantryman moved forward, it was supposed to sweep away enemy opposition in front of it. This was a common concept for automatic rifles at the time, and wholly unrealistic.
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U.S. infantrymen training with Chauchat's in 1919 at Ft. Custer, South Dakota.
It's apologist claim that the American .30-06 version of the Chauchat was badly made, and its opponents claim that they all were, but anyway a person looks at it, the jam prone Chauchat was so bad that American infantrymen commonly dropped it and simply picked up a rifle in combat. Therefore, whatever the TO&E showed, it was providing little support to anyone, no matter how deployed.
The American solder on the left is equipped with the terrible Chauchat Mle 1918
Backing the infantry up, however, were British and French heavy machine guns. By the end of the war native designs had been adopted by the US in the form of the M1917 heavy machine gun, a Browning design, and the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle.
Val Browning firing an example of his father's M1917 machinegun.
In the late stages of the Great War the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, which became the standard light machinegun of the U.S. Army for the next forty plus years. As its name indicates, it was, however, designed as an automatic rifle, not a light machinegun. Highly mechanically reliable, however, and not as heavy as the Lewis Gun, it was fairly modern at the time it was adopted, and naturally kept on as the post-war light machinegun for the infantry and cavalry, with the cavalry having its own version termed a "machine rifle".
After the First World War, the Army, based on its experiences in the war and its greater appreciation of what automatic weapons mean, revised the infantry platoon significant and created the infantry squad. At this point, the squad starts to become quite recognizable, smaller and backed up by a light machinegun in the form of hte BAR. In the cavalry it was similiar, except the cavalry had its own BAR version, which was termined a "machine rifle".
After the First World War, the Army, based on its experiences in the war and its greater appreciation of what automatic weapons meant, revised the infantry platoon significant and created the infantry squad. At this point, the squad starts to become quite recognizable. By World War Two, the Army's infantry squad looked like this:
When properly constituted, it was led by a Sergeant (E4 at the time, equivalent to the modern Specialist or Corporal in grade), with an assistant squad leader who was a Corporal. Everyone else was a private of some sort. The two NCOs and the riflemen were all armed with M1 Garands. The Scouts were supposed to be armed with M1903 bolt actions, but were often armed with M1 Garands. The Automatic Rifleman carried a BAR.
In the Marine Corps, however, the wartime organization developed into a different configuration. Marine Corps squads were split in half, and two BARs were issued.
In both the Marines and the Army BARs were often stripped of their bipods and used as automatic rifles by default. This was frankly less than an ideal situation, and it meant that while the US was fortunate to have a weapon that other nations did not, a functioning automatic rifle, it meant they lacked a more important one, a good light machinegun. A couple of efforts were made to address it, some minor, and one major, influenced by the interwar German development of the General Purpose Machine Gun.
The Germans had never been impressed with the automatic rifle and never bothered with them. During World War One, they fielded a really heavy light machinegun based on the Maxim 08 and ultimately pioneered the very late war development of the submachinegun. German infantrymen were backed up by a heavy Maxim.
By Oberfeldarzt Dr. Paul Calwer - Persönlicher Nachlass (abfotografiert vom Originalabzug), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80920917
Between the wars, the Germans went to a nine man squad consisting of nine men and one squad leader. One of the nine men was a machine gunner issued a MG34, or later on a MG42, belt fed weapons that could act as heavy light machineguns or mobile medium guns. The concept was revolutionary. All the other men in the squad supported the machine gunner.
By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-204-1727-18 / Grah / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5476452
Everyone facing the Germans was generally impressed with the MG34 and the MG42, even if they didn't adopt the same squad organization. The US took a run at duplicating the concept, however, with the M1919A6 machinegun, which was simply the M1919 with a bipod and a stock. It wasn't great, but it was better than nothing. And for a mediocre weapon, it had a pretty long run.
M1919A6 in the 1950s.
What all of this means is that the Army infantry squad of World War Two had one BAR or one M1919A6, and everybody else carried a rifle. The Marine Corps squad started off that way, but by the end of the war, it had two BAR men.
By the Korean War, the Army squad had been reduced to nine men, something that had been contemplated during World War Two. The war caught the Army off guard, and frankly in a state of neglect by Congress, which had not anticipated future conventional wars occurring. Work was occurring on new weapons, but with vast amounts of weapons left over from the Second World War, this had not been occurring with a sense of urgency.
The Korean War squad, therefore, was sort of a make do affair, but it very clearly pointed the direction that things were headed in. The nine man squad was busted into two subsquads, each of which had one BAR.
After the Korean War, the Army bizarrely increased the size of the squad again, something that developments in World War Two and Korea had pointed against. The squad was increased to eleven men, rivaling its World War Two size. It was a bad trend. Be that as it may, in the mid 1950s, that eleven men squad was eleven riflemen, armed with M1 Garands, and one BAR man or one man armed with a M1919A6.
Selective fire M1 Garand
In the late stages of the Second World War, the Army was experimenting with new squad automatic weapons. One concept was for a selective fire M1 Garand to replace the BAR in the upcoming invasion of Japan. That was a bad idea that the early end of the war prevented from being introduced. A better idea was a weapon designed as a GPMG.
M60. I have some personal expeience with carrying these around.
The Army oddly determined to base its design on the FG42, not the MG42, and introduced an experimental model as early as 1944. With work on the 7.62 NATO progressing, the design was complete by the late 1950s and in 1957 the new GMPG was introduced as the M60. Oddly, however, the Army took an extremely conservative approach and determined to also introduce a new light machinegun, the M15, based on the M14 action.
The M15 proved to be an immediate disaster. It had all the defects of the BAR, including a bottom feeding 20 round magazine, with none of its virtues. The M14 was a great rifle, but it was a lousy machinegun, and the M15 proved to be a failure almost as soon as it was introduced. Not willing to give up on the concept, the Army reengineered the M14 again for a second attempt, with the M14E2 being the result, the E indicating that the weapon was not yet standardized.
The M14E2 was deployed to Vietnam, but it simply didn't work in its intended role. In the Marine Corps, the decision was to keep the BAR in its existing role, the Marines being big fans of the BAR in the first place. In the Army, the M14E2 was withdrawn and the M60 simply filled the gap at first, just as the original GPMGs had.
Early on, the Army in Vietnam went to a fire team approach based on its big squad. Each squad had two fire teams, and each fire team had a fire team leader, a grenadier armed with a M79 grenade launcher, and an "automatic rifleman" armed with an M60, an assistant gunner. The balance of the squad was made up of three infantrymen who were not permanently assigned. With the introduction of the M16, an attempt was made to assign one rifleman in each fire team as an automatic rifleman, equipped with a bipod for his M16, but it was an absurd idea. For the most part, whether the fire team was armed with M14s or M16s, the M60 was the squad automatic weapon.
In the late 1970s, the Army and Marine Corps adopted the M240, which was a legendary Belgian GPMG often called the MAG. It's a great weapon, but its adoption was wholly unnecessary, as there was nothing wrong with the M60. The M240, for all its virgues, is a massively bulky weapon and with teh earlier introduction of the M16 it came to be the case that the squad now was carrying longarms that used two different types of ammunition.
Efforts to come up with an effective 5.56 light machingun had been going on since the Vietnam War, and indeed the Navy had deployed one in the form of the Stoner 63 designed by, yes of course, Eugene Stoner. Work continued after the war, and by the late 1970s the Belgian Minimi had pulled ahead and was ultimately adopted by the US as the M249.
U.S. Navy Seal with a Stoner 63.
And that has been the situation ever since.
Today, the squad is made up as depicted above. The squad automatic weapons are M249s. No matter what people want to call them, they're machineguns, not "automatic rifles". That's just a bit of talk recalling an earlier era. U.S. infantrymen have not carried an automatic rifle since the BAR was finally phased out of the National Guard in the late 1970s.
So, what's wrong with that?
Well, the 5.56.
The 5.56 just won't reach out and everybody knows it. That's why the M240 and indeed the M60 are still around. When a real machinegun is required, it's going to be the M240 or the M60. The M240 is issued at the platoon level, so there's not one far away.
With the introduction of the new 6.8 round, a new machinegun for the "automatic rifleman" role is an absolute must. Riflemen can't be carrying a longer range weapon than their supporting automatic weapon. And the new SIG design is a good one.
Oddly, however, the M240 will be retained, and for that there's no need. It ought to go.
And then there's the Marine Corps.
As we've noted, the Marines aren't adopting the 6.8, at leat yet.
And they are dumping the M249.
Their current rifle, the M27, was originally designed to be a true automatic rifle, so by adopting it, the Marines originally intended to take a giant leap backwards towards the BAR.
Which was a mistake.
But it's what they did, replacing the M4 carbine and the M249 with the M27, placing them in a situation which really hasn't existed, in a way, since before World War One.
They do retain the M240. But they're also openly holding out to adopt SIG's .338 MG 338, a GPMG that shoots the .338 Win Mag.
True, it will really reach out there, but . . . .
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