By January of 1962, a set of formal military specifications for a flechette-fir-ing weapon had been prepared and submitted to the Office, Chief of Ordnance (OCO) for approval. The specifications superseded the short-lived APHHW nomenclature with a new name for the project: the Special Purpose Individual Weapon; the SPIW. In these specifications one important main addition was made to the original burst-fire flechette weapon concept: the new SPIW was to combine the point-fire characteristics of the flechette-firing APHHW with the area-fire potential of a weapon like the recently introduced M79 grenade launcher. On March 22, 1962, the OCO approved the detailed forecast for the development of the SPIW. The object was to, "provide the individual soldier with a weapon system possessing the capability to engage point and area targets to a range of 400 meters." The forecast ended by confidently predicting that the SPIW would be type classified "Standard A" by June of 1966.
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