"There's no good way to clear a stairwell. 5 ways or 500 ways, they all suck. Your best course of action is to go outside get on the radio, blow this bitch up. Boom, stairwell is clear." -Clint Smith

So yeah im definitely going to double down on the "fuck the XM5" memes.

Good

Stupid wunderwaffe that costs 5x as much as the contemporary weapon in service with marginal increases in some performance metrics at the sacrifice of others.

I'd also like to add here, quoting some of what Jeff Gurwich said.

The NGWS XM5 program was quite literally developed for "overmatch" primarily overmatch against the PKM weapon system in Afghanistan. It was developed with Afghanistan in mind.

Firefights with PKMs were a game of terrain and distance.

MTONE or Motified Table of Oraganization and Equipment which explains the basics of squad/fireteam breakdown. 3 squads of Rifle and SAWs. 1 of Weapons/beltfed.

The critical analysis of overmatch is that being engaged by a PKM at distance is only matched by M240B's (or other 7.62 MGs) in this example.

The solution is not a 13lbs Rifle chambered in 6.8.

It's SAWs being updated to 7.62. Or in Jeff's example, a MK48.

The full analysis is here: https://youtu.be/YdAYSEm5zJA

Tldr

The XM5 was created by the same goobers who made UCP and the IOTV.

With everything said the last few days, it's important to know the XM250 did nothing wrong and is valid <3