Howdy folks! A few weeks back I posted the Sig MCX Spear I picked up through the “Friends of Sig” Program. Sometimes working retail does have its advantages! After fiddling with it for a few weeks, I finally got a chance to get it out to the range, and try it out. This is not intended to be a review, as I want a lot of time with the gun before I solidify any opinions, just a few first impressions.
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As a bit of background, I am a former Army Infantryman, and all of my opinions here should be seen through that lens. I am also a huge fanboy of 7.62 NATO/.308, and am more than willing to accept the increased weight and recoil for the advantages of that cartridge. My current favorite battle rifle is the the FN SCAR 17S, and I will likely compare the Spear to it many times in this.
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Alrighty, enough blabbing, here’s the BLUF:
Pros:
Great Ergonomics
Makes use of off the shelf AR upgrades/parts/accessories
Cons:
Mediocre Accuracy
Chonky
If you look up the Spear on line, the two issues every keyboard commando will warn you about is the weight, and recoil. Folks will spout numbers off saying how many tons it weighs, or showcase videos of the rifle bouncing out of the hands of guys firing one. Honestly, neither issue is really a big deal for me. The recoil is certainly more than a 5.56 AR, but on par or better than an AR-10. It’s not quite as good as the SCAR, but not terribly far behind it either. It certainly weighs more than the SCAR, about a pound heavier as kitted out in the above picture, but still in the modern fighting rifle weight range. I’d say a fair percentage of that is the relatively heavy barrel the Spear has.
Compared to the SCAR, the Spear has a few major advantages, namely in aftermarket support. This is true because the Spear uses a lot more AR compatible parts than the SCAR. Triggers, pistol grips, mags, buttstocks, safeties, etc all work right out of the box. At the same time, the Spear shines over an AR-10 by being designed from the ground up with a piston system and internal recoil spring. No buffer tube needed on this guy. To some, that’s a minor issue, but it means the design has more flexibility moving forward. The AR has been long shackled by the receiver extension being crucial to the design; folding stocks have to take that into account, and the now very popular AR carbine stock in designed around that issue. The Spear side steps the issue, and gives the weapon the option to use existing stocks, or whatever folding/collapsing designs come out in the future. At the same time, it has intigrated the longer, M-LOK handguard much better than the SCAR has. Controls are very heavily AR inspired, but notable improvements are ambi controls for everything, including a very user friend trigger finger bolt catch/release for right handed shooters, and a charging handle worthy of the name with the left side charger. (non reciprocating for those that care about such things) In short, the Spear feels more “future proof” than either the AR or SCAR, lessons learned on these and other current weapons baked into the design from the get go, but with room for the design to grow and improve on its own as well.
What about the down sides? Well, as mentioned, it’s a heavy girl. It’s also chonky in that it feels bigger than it really is. Like most piston guns, the rifle is a bit front heavy as well, meaning that you start feeling it after a while of running and gunning with it. Not terrible, but noticeable. More importantly, to me, is the rifle’s mediocre accuracy. Most reviewers will state that they are 2-3 MOA, and that’s true. While the SCAR, and many AR-10s are capable of 1 MOA accuracy with good ammo like Federal Gold Medal Match, the Spear isn’t one of them. I had a couple of groups as small as 1.5 MOA, but even with high quality ammo, 2-3 was the normal range. Ball ammo widened up a bit, but not terribly so. Certainly within the “combat accuracy” range for a battle rifle, but not likely a good candidate for a DMR.
Only malfunctions I experienced through the course of the day were a few failure to feeds, always on the last round in the magazine. Some times it would try to feed the round, and the bolt would smash the case a bit, and other times it would just close on an empty chamber. (thinking about it now, it seemed to be worse earlier in the day than later, with the first couple rounds bent badly, but later ones still very much capable of being fired) I didn’t jot down which magazines this happened with, but it was with both MagPul LR/SR PMags, and Lancer L7AWM mags. Hopefully it’s just a break in issue, and it’ll work itself out over time, but we’ll see. Going to look into the issue and see what I can find.
Anywho, hopefully that made sense to someone. Here’s a couple pictures of my dorky butt at the range having fun. Not sure why, but I like the vibe of Tigerstripe and the Spear’s FDE.
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