>>63975056 (OP)SIG went from being just another company to suddenly being the main provider of the US Army's rifle, and pistol. and machine gun, and sidearm, and the accessories package, etc. , all in the span of a few years.
That alone is suspicious in itself, but it's made worse given how SIG has lately been having quality control issues. In their rifles, you have bent barrels for instance, and their P320 pistol (adopted as the M17 and M18) has this "little" issue where it shoots by itself; this past week the FBI ballistics lab confirmed it and now federal agencies are avoiding these guns like the actual plague, as well as civilians.
So the question is, how did these products get adopted by Big Army? To top it off, it's a design philosophy issue: the (X)M7 is designed to be powerful on a per bullet basis and to have a lot of range and armor penetration capabilities. The problems: 1) such long ranges don't exist except in Afghanistan, which the US is out of; 2) no enemy of the US fields strong body armor at any significant scale. This raises the question of why we are making it shoot super high pressure big bullets in the first place. Additionally, it messes up logistics, as it's a brand new type of bullet, which also messes up NATO standardization. Finally, the cost of a bigger bullet is that you can carry less of them. A report by a colonel testing the gun said this is catastrophic: soldiers can carry a third less ammunition than before, leading to soldiers running out in training exercises. And all in order to gain irrelevant advantages!
To add insult to injury, it's extremely expensive. Just the scope alone, which is supposed to have fancy electronic features, costs like 12 grand each. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that a kitted out M4A1 with scope and foregrip costs the government $1000. This means that for the value of one (1) scope you could outfit an entire squad and then some! Did I mention that the scope malfunctions all the time? Whoops!