New soldier weapons.

• Author: Kojro, Chester A.
• Position: Readers' Forum - Letter to the editor

In reference to the January 2013 article, "Army, Marine Corps Succeed in Rapidly Fielding Specialized Individual Weapons" (p.28), your reporter has been doubly snookered.

The Army's M26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System (MASS) might have been "rapidly fielded" in the sense that once delivered to the Army the weapons were soon issued to troops. However, its actual development and procurement date back at least a decade.

Until I retired in early 2003, I was a combat development analyst at the Army Maneuver Support Center at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. I was the engineer school project officer dealing with "non-lethal weapons" and attended various conferences and working group meetings. The M26, --though under some other name that escapes me today--was among the weapons being demonstrated back then.

The Marine Corps' M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (JAR) is not a machine gun and does not "replace" the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) at all. One should recall that before the...