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A few years ago, the Marines dropped the M249 SAW in favor of the M27 Individual Automatic Rifle as the primary automatic weapon for the Marine Rifle Squad. 

And as it turns out, the Marines liked the M27 so much, they're going to adopt it pretty much as the standard rifle for all Marine Infantry. 

 

After more than a year of speculation, the word comes straight from the commandant of the Marine Corps: Grunts, including those outside the squad, are getting the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle — and a whole lot of other goodies to boot.

Military.com first reported in November 2016 that the Marine Corps was eyeing the idea of fielding the weapon more broadly within the infantry, and had issued M27s to members of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the service's experimental infantry battalion, to observe how it improved their effectiveness.

Currently, the M27 is carried by only one member of each infantry fire team: the automatic rifleman.

With the battalion's deployment to the Pacific at an end, Marine leaders are considering a list of 41 different recommendations generated by the unit, and M27s are at the top of the list.

In an interview with Military.com in late December, Commandant Gen. Robert Neller confirmed that a decision had been made to move forward with fielding the M27 more widely within the infantry.

Every Marine in an infantry squad, he said, will receive the high-end rifle. And while not every Marine in a grunt battalion will carry the IAR, others outside of the squad will also be issued one.

 

While the H&K 416 based IAR is much more expensive than an M4 carbine, the relatively small numbers of Marine Infantrymen means it's a relatively small cost associated with the switch. With a solicitation for up to 51,000 rifles, that would be a cost of about $150 million. Considering the cost of an F-35B, that's chump change. And considering the Marine ethos regarding rifles, it would be money well spent.