The ill fated Special Purpose Individual Weapon (SPIW) project is an interesting part of the US military assault rifle development during the 1960’s and came about as a direct offshoot from the SALVO Project. There is a very interesting 3 part article that was written by R. Blake Stevens on smallarmsreview.com, which is a synopsis of the excellent book published in 1985 and authored by Stevens and Dr. Edward C. Ezell, in 1985; The SPIW – The Deadliest Weapon that Never Was. (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). Shortly, the SPIW was “to be a hand-held weapon holding sixty rounds of “point target” ammunition (deliverable in the form of controlled bursts of tiny, lethal darts or “flechettes”), plus three 40mm “area target” grenades in a piggyback launcher, all in a package weighing less than a loaded .30 caliber M1 rifle”. A lot of hype and promises went into what ended up as a complete failure, as was quoted by retired Springfield Armory engineer Fred Reed who summed up the project as follows: “The SPIW was the first of the programs to be doomed from the start by ridiculous specifications.” This discussion is mainly about the individual cartridges developed, and not the full history of the Flechette development, which is covered by the smallarmsreview.com articles.
