U.S. Army Now Equipping M7 Rifles With Cutting-Edge DAGIR-V1 Lasers

When I showed up for Army basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, back in those long-lost days of the Cold War, one of the first things I learned, along with my fellows, was that no matter what we ended up doing in the Army, we were riflemen first and foremost. That lesson wasn't lost on us; not with the emphasis placed on basic rifle marksmanship. A few years later, I ended up teaching basic rifle marksmanship to ROTC cadets, and that was the lesson I tried to instill in them, as well.

Back then, we were using the good old M-16A1 rifle, and it was, at the time, considered a pretty cutting-edge weapon. Now, though, the Army is moving to the M7 rifle, newer still, and those rifles are getting something else: A cutting-edge laser to go along with the Army's night-vision gear.

The U.S. Army ordered 8,936 DAGIR-V1 laser systems to support the M7 rifle’s fire-control program, and the company building them happens to be a family-owned business that got its start making night vision gear five decades ago. B.E. Meyers & Co., a Redmond, Washington manufacturer, announced it has been awarded a contract to deliver the systems in fiscal year 2027, awarded through the service’s Program Manager Soldier Lethality office under the DLA Tailored Logistics Support Program.

Here's how those things work:

Understanding what the DAGIR-V1 actually does requires understanding the basic problem soldiers face fighting at night, which has shaped infantry tactics since night vision goggles became standard issue decades ago. A soldier wearing night vision can see in the dark, but aiming a rifle precisely still requires some way to mark exactly where the weapon is pointed, since standard rifle sights are difficult or impossible to use through night vision optics.
The DAGIR-V1 solves that by combining an infrared illuminator, which floods a wide area with infrared light invisible to the naked eye but clearly visible through night vision, with both infrared and visible aiming lasers mounted directly on the weapon, letting a soldier point the laser dot at a target and fire with confidence that the rifle is aimed where the dot lands. The system uses what’s called VCSEL technology, short for vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, a more advanced and precise alternative to older laser diode designs that B.E. Meyers says produces a sharper, more consistently shaped beam than older laser aiming devices, improving a soldier’s ability to identify targets and assess threats in low light or total darkness.

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There's a serious "cool" factor to all this, obviously. But I always have the same old-soldier's question about all this: What happens when the tech fails? Technology is, yes, a great force multiplier; we've had a recent and compelling lesson in that in the recent fracas with Iran. But tech is limited, especially when it's mounted on an individual weapon like a rifle. Batteries, after all, don't last forever. But there's one thing that never will fail that soldier who is a rifleman first: Basic marksmanship skills. Proficiency with a weapon should always mean, above all things, proficiency with iron sights and a Mark I eyeball, even at night. These things will never fail due to a bad battery - or an electromagnetic pulse.

Every soldier is a rifleman first. I will admit to being a recent convert to some optical sights myself, as my eyes are aging; my favorite heavy-cover rifle, a Marlin 1895G in .45-70, now wears a red-dot optic in addition to the old ghost-ring rear and ramp front I installed years ago. But a young soldier should be able to engage and destroy the enemy without any fancy electronics; while things like this new laser are cool and no doubt useful, let's not let it replace good old basic marksmanship.

Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.

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