The current field of AR pattern rifles goes from ‘barely runs’ on the low end of the price spectrum, through to a heavy crowd of ‘runs…barely’ in the middle of the field. X2 Dev Group, the manufacturers of the AR-X LightFighter, have gone to the far end and developed the LightFighter to be a top-tier exceptional rifle. The LightFighter is a rifle that is really good at what it does, however you decide to use it.
X2 Dev Group spent two years developing the LightFighter. This isn’t a parts bin AR. X2 designed, tweaked, and re-designed everyt part of the AR until they had the right. The entire lower receiver, the barrel, muzzle brake and the gas system have all spent time on the drawing board. They’ve gotten so good at this, they’re selling not only complete rifles but also build components and, most notably, their barrels.
As a precision shooter, I firmly believe the barrel is the heart of the rifle. The LightFighter has a 16” stainless barrel, with a black nitride finish that’s made in-house by X2 Dev Group in the USA. The barrel features a 1:8 twist that hits the sweet spot for most bullet weights. Most importantly, X2 has built the barrel from 416R stainless steel, with a heavily fluted pattern. That produces supreme rigidity and exceptional heat dispersion, all in a weight that comes in five ounces lighter than many carbon-wrapped high-end barrels on the market.
If there’s one thing a rifle needs to have, it’s accuracy. The LightFighter guarantees “sub-MOA” accuracy with quality ammunition. That’s a claim that’s been run into the ground by gun companies looking to push their rifles over the sales counter. In reality, shooting less than one inch at 100 yards doesn’t happen much once shooters get off the bench. However, the test of mechanical accuracy is necessary to find out how the rifle is capable of performing, and the LightFighter is capable of performing extremely well.
I started zeroing with 55 grain FMJ ammo just to get on paper. I had topped the LightFighter with a Steiner T6XI 1-6x LPVO. More on the optic later, but for now, it’s perfect for this rifle. I was running Federal American Eagle and Winchester M193 that I already had loaded in PMags. At 4x at 25 yards, I shot five rounds in a ragged hole.
I have a firm belief in the 100-yard magnified zero, so after I sent the first few groups to center up, I pushed out to 100. Doing a few barrel swabs between groups just to keep the break-in gods happy, I settled in and put five rounds of 55 grain ball into 1¼ inches. Having hauled out my tub-o-bullets, I started moving up in bullet weight until I achieved nirvana.
I found true enlightenment in the 68-grain Black Hills Heavy Match Hollow Point. I have some of these as factory remanufactured, and several hundred rounds of factory new. Goodness gracious the LightFighter likes this ammo. My average for five-shot groups was ¾-inch with quite a few groups in the ½-inch range. That was accomplished with a front bi-pod attached to the supplied forward Picatinny rail, and a rear bag from Weibad.
My best group was 14 rounds at slightly more than an inch. Heat in the barrel didn’t seem to be an issue at all. I’ve had some exceptionally accurate rifles over the years, and the LightFighter is among the best in the semi-auto AR world I’ve ever seen.
Running factory loaded M855 Winchester green-tips with the 62 grain penetrator bullet yielded right at a king’s-inch sized groups. However, the impressive thing was that five rounds averaged 3,075 fps. Additionally, my pet 62 grain Hornady load regularly ran at 3,088 fps and grouped at 7/8-inch. I would imagine that if I backed off the speed just a hair on the 62 grain load, those groups might tighten up even more.
Moving beyond 200 yards is where things got even more impressive. At 200, I tested the pretty commonly used 75 grain Black Hills BTHP and they landed well inside 1¾ inch. That’s about as well I can honestly see with 6x magnification. On another range trip, I ran the LightFighter all the way to 800 yards and as long as my wind calls were on, the hits just kept coming. Eight-inch plates at 400 were easy-peasy, and 2/3 IPSC targets at 700 and 800 were no issue at all. And with the Steiner being a mil/mil system, I was right at home making real world hits using the try-data from my ballistic calculator. So yeah, this rifle shoots amazingly well.
Contributing to the accuracy of the LightFighter is its trigger. The X2 guys use the Rise Armament drop-in, flat faced trigger. With a Lyman trigger gauge I measured an average of 3 lbs, 8 oz over three pulls, resetting it with the bolt carrier as if you were charging the rifle from a magazine. I believe it’s the Rave 140 trigger, but since it’s secured with anti-walk pins, I didn’t take it out to inspect. It has absolutely no creep, breaks incredibly crisply, and resets like a tuned 1911. It’s darn good and very fitting in a rifle of this quality.
In four full days of flat range shooting, I ran 580 rounds of ammo through the LightFighter. Prior to starting, I oiled the bolt and swabbed the barrel. After that, it was a random smattering of barrel swabbing and bolt oiling, and that’s about all it got. I didn’t experience a single malfunction.
Once I knew the rifle was accurate, I took it to a 40-hour law enforcement sniper/observer course I was teaching. This is typically a bolt-gun dominated field, but I brought the LightFighter along to have the guys run it just for kicks. It had another 460 rounds of 55 grain FMJ ran through it from distances that varied between 15 yards and 200 yards. The feedback from the eight students was that this thing is a keeper, and moreover, an exceptional rifle for a spotter to use to back up the .308 shooter. With everything from barricade drills to rifle-pistol transition drills being done, the LightFighter didn’t experience a single malfunction. It didn’t seem to care whether it ate from steel GI mags, PMags, or the X2 Dev Group-supplied Lancer mag.
The LightFighter certainly isn’t your typical supermodel rifle that’s great to look at, but miserable to live with. The guys at X2 have tweaked everything on the gun to make it work for the user. The lower is completely ambidextrous. This isn’t accomplished with bolt-on widgets, it’s done completely from the ground up. Both sides of the gun can lock and release the bolt and drop the magazine just as quickly and easily.
Support side transitions with a magazine reload were easy and fast. The lower and upper fit together with zero perceivable play at all and the ¼ throw ambidextrous safety is stupid-fast. The curved and beveled magwell helped with reload speed and the milled-in trigger guard prevents knuckle blisters. So yeah, it works every bit as good as it looks.
The B5 Systems P-Grip 23 with grip plug is very comfortable. This was the first time I’ve used this grip. I like that it doesn’t have any texture along the backstrap. While that might sound counterintuitive, the smooth back is much faster in transition drills when you have to holster a pistol and move to the slung rifle. The smooth back allows the hand to slide up to the firing position quickly and efficiently. The B5 Systems 6-position stock is comfortable and wide enough at the buffer tube to get a proper cheek weld.
The tunable gas system is unique to the LightFighter. Instead of rotating settings to increase or decrease gas pressure, the LightFighter uses supplied, replaceable gas plugs. Coupled with the quick-detach handguard, the user can tune the system to whatever suppressor and ammo combination necessary, then rest assured it’s going to stay that way. Self-adjusting gas blocks after long strings of fire are a thing of the past.
I brought the LightFighter to a major military base my SWAT team had permission to train on. For three days, we had an entire village of cinderblock buildings, tunnels, a hospital, a hotel, and plenty of dusty dirt roads. I used the LightFighter for an entire day as other days required different equipment for the mission set.
The focus of the training was hostage rescue, and we had live role-players and Teir-1 instructors. The role-players were engaged with Simunition rounds, which requires a bolt replacement. Altogether I ran about 330 sim rounds through the LightFighter in a single day. Accuracy was superb, even though the longest shot was only about 30 yards. I didn’t do any gas system adjustments to the gun. It ran just fine with only one cleaning over the lunch break.
In the live fire shoot house, we shot frangible ammunition. Running the 50 grain Winchester jacketed frangible ammo was uneventful. This added another 120-ish rounds to the day’s count on the factory set gas block without any fuss encountered. 
X2 Dev Group also has what they call their Future Proof program, which means that if they develop upgrades in the future and you’re signed up for the program, you get the upgrade free of charge. For life. With their own trigger in development, I’m really looking forward to trying that out.
While the $2,795 price tag can seem steep, you’re really getting what you pay for here. I’ve built several custom ARs that came in above the two grand mark by the time I was finished. That’s easy to do once you get into the quality component game. Add the free Future Proof program, and a quality LPVO, and you have a one-and-done rifle that will perform above expectations, however you decide to use it.
Specifications: X2 Dev Group AR-X LightFighter Rifle
Caliber: .223 Wylde
Barrel Length: 16 inches
Gas System: Adjustable:
Controls: Fully Ambidextrous
Price: $2,795