From New Hampshire With Love?

SIG’s MCX SBR turns 7.62 X 39 RED and we love it

- Rob Curtis

While the term Virtus dates at least 600 years before the birth of Christ as a way of describing the virtues of Rome’s, it feels like it took the 7.62 x 39mm version of SIG’s namesake MCX Virtus nearly as long to reach the market.

But, it’s arrived. And, like Horatius at the bridge, the MCX x39 earns the heroic Virtus commendation by standing tall amid an onslaught of thousands … of rounds … of mostly garbage ammo, that is.

LOOKING BACK

This isn’t SIG’s first rodeo building a modular platform with the ubiquitous Russian cartridge in mind.

It’s hard to ignore the company’s redheaded stepchild, the SIG556xi and its stillborn AK magazine compatible variant. Yet, leave out the misguided attempt to capture the nobility of SIG’s SG 550 series rifles in a U.S.-made package and concentrate on the configurable nature of the rifle, and you might see parallels in the company’s vision for the MCX platform.

While the SIG556 was midway through its product life cycle, evolving into the configurable 556xi, what was to become the MCX began development in response to a government contract looking for a low visibility assault weapon (LVAW) chambered in 300 Blackout. The two products were developed in separate silos. The former was a commercial product line extension; the latter, a product meant only for the military market. Yet, both grew into configurable, multicaliber, short-stroke piston platforms that would each sprout a viable 7.62 x 39 off shoot.

As the LVAW matured into the MCX platform, the Highlander principle played out and the company shifted development and production resources to the more popular platform. The 556xi and its nascent 7.62 x 39 Russian configuration had to die in order for the MCX to fulfill its destiny.

WHY 7.62 X 39 NOW?