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Recently I had a disagreement with someone in here on the NGSW program and the SIG rifle it's based on. For the uninitiated, this is the Army's newest multibillion dollar boondoggle, rich with corruption and marketing lies. I've been bagging on this system since it was announced years ago, and it has progressed through military testing despite really withering criticism. Many people better qualified than I have articulated the problems with the system both conceptually and in practice. I want to focus on one simple thing that might be easier for non-military/gun people to understand. Weight.
Weight is incredibly important, which is why when I saw that the bare, unloaded weight of the gun was 9.8 lb, I knew it wasn't going to be a general issue weapon. We now know that the whole system in standard configuration weighs about 13.5lb unloaded and somewhere between fifteen and sixteen loaded, depending on ammo. This is with the fancy scope and suppressor, but crucially, not with a flashlight or IR laser device, both of which are standard for line infantry. With all that, we're pushing twenty pounds.
Forget all that extra weight, and just focus on the advertised 9.8 lb a moment. For comparison, the M4 variants most commonly issued now are about 6.5 lb. With sights, lights and lasers, about ten pounds. The old full-length M-16s that they dropped for those M4s weigh 7.5 lb. The gigantic, heavy M1 Garand from ww2 was 9.5, and didn't need any more weight to make it work. The 1903 Springfield, named for the year of its adoption, was 8.6. The last generally issued service weapon to weigh more than the bare NGSW was the french muskets they sent us in the Revolutionary war, and that's only because they were heavier than the British models. The Brown Bess musket from the eighteenth century weighed less than the bare SIG.
Roughly eight to ten pounds is what almost all standard-issue firearms weigh in practice. Any lighter and you add capability, any heavier and the average troop can't lug it.
If we count the actual loaded, serviceable weight of the gun, the last generally issued service weapon to be even close to that heavy was the Macedonian Sarissa pike, at 12-14lb.
If adopted generally, the NGSW would be by a substantial margin the heaviest weapon ever carried by the line in human history. The last infantry to have more weight in their hands were the Roman legions, if we're counting that big-ass shield. On weight alone, this gun is DOA for general issue.
Unless you count the StG-44 as 'generally issued' (by either Germany or Yugoslavia, take your pick), which despite its looks weighs just over 10 pounds (unloaded).
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