U.S. Army Requests Additional $26 million to Purchase 7,000 New Infantry Weapons

by David Crane
david@defensereview.com

O.k., this one looks legit. It comes to us straight from the U.S. Army’s PEO Soldier website. "PEO" stands for "Program Executive Office". DefRev was tipped to it by one of our readers.

The article discusses the XM8 "Lightweight Assault Carbine" and the Army’s desire to field "the entire family of XM-8 rifles and not just the first three variants" (compact, carbine, sharpshooter). Apparently, the new…

schedule includes the automatic rifle, which had previously "not been scheduled for fielding until FY-06." According to the article, the XM-8 recently went through cold weather testing in Alaska, and the resulting modifications to the weapon based on those tests will appear in May.

The article goes on to read, "During the summer of 2005, a team of officials from program executive office soldier weapons, sustainment specialists from Rock Island, IL, and officers from TRADOC will replace a unit‘s weapons, magazines, manuals and accessories with the XM-8 and begin training the soldiers. The process should wrap up in September 2005…"

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