This is the legendary XM8 rifle. It fires 556 at a rate of 750 rounds per minute. In the early 2000’s the XM8 was actually on the verge of replacing the aging M4 series as the US army’s primary infantry rifle. What followed was a story filled with drama, intrigue and accusations that it wasted $33 million dollars worth of taxpayers dollars. I think the XM8 is a great example of what happens when science, bureaucracy and soldiers’ needs all collide in the worst possible way. But if it was never adopted why is it still an iconic weapon why is it still a household name? You’re about to hear the story of one of the most ambitious firearms programs and how its failure helped pave the way for the next generation weapons of today. Written by: Chris Cappy and Diego AceitunoVideo Edited by: Chris Cappysubscribe to: @spartan117gw / @spartan117gw Thanks for making this video possible !The saga of the XM8 started in 2002 just one year after the war in Afghanistan had kicked off. Lower enlisted grunts were complaining about their M4’s jamming and malfunctioning constantly. The Army vice chief of staff General Jack Keane was outraged when he heard this. The man went on a warpath to solve the problem. He turned to a brand new organization called PEO soldier lead by Colonel Moran to finally replace the M4. PEO-Soldier the agency responsible for prototyping everything a soldier wears or carries to this day. The agency had a special power they had the authority to ignore much of the government red tape and go around slow moving bureaucracy. The goal was to replace the M4 within 3 years instead of the normal 10 it would take. These guys wanted to speed run weapons development. Colonel Moran immediately set out to find a loophole. Something that would ultimately doom the XM8 rifle. The first thing you normally need when trying to create a new firearm in the military is something called an “Operational requirement” document. These are written up by the Infantry Center. This would define the XM8 rifles necessary firepower, magazine size, rate of fire, weight, all of its capabilities. But there was a problem. It normally took years and a multi-step approval process to get a new one authorized. If you think that sounds boring and bureaucratic, so too did Colonel Moran. So Instead he dug up an old previously approved “operational requirement” from almost ten years earlier from the 1994 Objective Individual Combat Weapon Program. What was that? The OICW program was essentially an XM8 rifle with a 20mm programmable airburst grenade slapped onto the top of it. Sounds like something that could be useful right so why did it end up stalling? The weapons’ grenades weren’t powerful enough, it weighed a ton at 17.6 lbs which is more than an M249, and future versions of it malfunctioned during training injuring a soldier. All that is to say, the OICW program was a dead end. But Colonel Moran believed he could split it into two separate projects with Increment I being the XM8 and Increment II being the airburst grenade launcher.