The Sacred Love of a Soldier and His XM-8 Rifle

Though I have much love and respect for the M-16, and it has served us well for 4 (!) decades, I can't deny my excitement over the weapon of the future. Check out the video in that story to see the XM-8 rifle in action, and check out this page for more details:

The XM-8 is a model of efficiency in use: its operation controls are ambidextrous, it has three firing modes (single round, three-round burst, and fully automatic), and can handle a variety of magazines, including a 30 round semi-opaque (to allow the shooter to see how many rounds are left in the magazine) hard plastic magazine, which can be rapidly reloaded in close combat situations, and a 100-round drum (for sustained fire), as well as 10-round weapon qualification magazines and M-16 style metal magazines.

Whether the user is a sniper or part of an attack team, the XM-8 can accommodate all uses. It uses four different interchangeable barrels (a 9" compact, a 12.5" assault, a 20" match grade sharpshooter, or a 20" heavy barrel for sustained high ROF applications), each of which can be swapped out at the unit level in less than 2 minutes. The weapon can also be equipped with a 5-position collapsible stock, a flat butt plate (for an extremely small weapon profile), an adjustable sniper stock, or a folding stock.

The XM-8 doesn't skimp on optics, either. Its optics/sight package is an "all-in-one" combination: an infrared laser target designator, IR target illuminator and 1x close combat red-dot sight. In addition to incorporating the three sights into one system, the sight is zeroed at the factory and can be removed and reinstalled by the operator without specialized tools, or the loss of zero.

And here's an an in-depth article by Global Security.

Oh, and a picture: