The Army said Tuesday it has selected Sig Sauer to provide the service’s Next-Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW), awarding the company a 10-year deal to deliver the new XM5 Rifle and the XM250 Automatic Rifle.
Sig Sauer, which beat out
LoneStar Future Weapons for the contract, also received an initial $20.4 million delivery order for weapons and ammunition that will undergo Army testing.
The Army noted the decision follows “a rigorous 27-month prototyping and evaluation effort” that involved testing several competing prototype systems through technical demonstrations and soldier touchpoints.
NGSW is the Army’s program to begin replacing its M4 rifles and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, with the new XM5 and XM250 weapons set to fire new 6.8mm bullets.
“Both weapons provide significant capability improvements in accuracy, range and overall lethality. They are lightweight, fire more lethal ammunition, mitigate recoil, provide improved barrel performance, and include integrated muzzle sound and flash reduction,” the Army wrote in its announcement.
The Army has previously said a production contract for NGSW could include up to 250,000 weapons and 150 million rounds of 6.8mm ammunition.
Sig Sauer’s NGSW contract includes opportunities to provide the new weapons to other U.S. military services and “potentially” other countries through the foreign military sales process, according to the Army.
In January, the Army announced it had awarded Vortex Optics a 10-year deal worth up to $2.7 billion to deliver the fire control system for NGSW (Defense Daily, Jan. 7).