On the factory floor at gun maker Sig Sauer’s headquarters, shipping pallets loaded with brand new M8 Next Generation Squad Weapon rifles are shrink wrapped and waiting to be dispatched to soldiers.

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

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

Both weapons use the same ammunition caliber, the 6.8×51mm Common Cartridge developed by Sig Sauer. The cartridge features a hybrid design intended to withstand high chamber pressure.

The M7 encountered complaints from soldiers about its weight and length. Soldiers also raised concerns about undue wear that they said the high pressure rounds were placing on components, including barrels and suppressors.

Sig Sauer pushed back at the time against several of the strongest complaints. The company now presents the transition from the M7 to the M8, which was previously called the XM8, as evidence that it can respond quickly to soldier feedback.

“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.”

Image Credit: DoW

The new rifle is more than a pound lighter than the M7 and has a barrel that is 3.5 inches shorter. It also replaces the less popular folding stock with a fixed stock and incorporates feedback based changes, including added rigidity for the handguard.

Josh Shoemaker, Sig Sauer’s product manager for defense, said soldiers who previously received the M7 should experience a smooth transition. “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,” Shoemaker said. The primary design challenge was cutting weight from the M7, which weighed more than 8 pounds unloaded and nearly 10 pounds with its included suppressor.

That represented a significant difference from the legacy M4A1 carbine, which weighs 6.34 pounds unloaded. Shoemaker said Sig Sauer reduced the weight gap between the M4 and M8 to a little less than a pound, although that comparison does not include the M8 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.

Image Credit: DoW

“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 the barrel size also changed the weapon’s center of gravity, helping the weight reduction effort.

“When you pick up that M8, the balance of it feels a lot better, with that suppressor being on a shorter weapon system,” Shoemaker added. Budget documents released earlier this year show the Army is curtailing M7 procurement, with no additional rifles requested for Fiscal Year 2027 and about 50,000 previously delivered.

The Army has not said what it plans to do with M7 rifles already in inventory, especially if M8s are issued to every soldier who previously received an M7. Shoemaker said options include sending M7s to basic training units or reassigning them to Guard or Reserve units.

Another possibility would involve conversion kits that could turn the Army’s existing M7 rifles 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,” Shoemaker said.

“All in, you could probably convert [an M7 to an M8] in under five minutes.” Army leaders have not publicly addressed whether they are considering that option, while Shoemaker said the service knows about the available choices and is deciding which direction to take.