SIG 556 Rifle

10 July 08

SIG's M556 Rifle

I finally have an opportunity to train with SIG's military rifle, in 223. Like everything SIG makes, it is well put together, weighty, not as compact as my XCRs nor even my ARs. I'm doing an Urban rifle Course in OKnext week, so I'll have the opportunity to use it there.

Controls are AR-like. The rifle itself is rugged and obviously designed for heavy fighting. Trigger is precise. Link is quite distinctive. This rifle is surely set up for serious use.

It takes AR-15 magazines. I'm sure there was loud and acrimonious discussion over this subject deep within the bowels of SIG-dom. SIG makes a wonderful, proprietary plastic magazine, for its earlier 550-series of rifles, which were imported under LE-only restrictions. The decision was made that this" general" version of the Rifle, the current M556, would be modified to accept commonly-available AR-15 magazines and not the former, proprietary ones.

I'm sure many in SIG anticipated magazine-related "problems" to thus develop with this new rifle, over which the manufacturer, of course, has no control. We'll see!

I've developed a preference for steel AR-15 magazines (over aluminum), and the ones made by Fusil an C-Products run just fine.

I don't like the ambidextrous safety levers, and the SIG rifle has one. When I operate the lever with my right thumb, my trigger-finger (right index-finger), which is correctly in the register position, interferes with the safety' s movement. Happily, the right-side extension is pinned in place, and I anticipate simply removing it, leaving the lever on the left side intact.

My copy of the 556 has full-length rails on all sides, and I have a Micro-Aimpoint, forward mounted, on Mark LaRue's wonderful quick-detach mount. The Rifle comes with crude, but wonderfully compact, iron sights.

At $1,500.00, the SIG Rifle is at the high end, as SIGs always are. But, there is a lot to like here.

More later!

/John