Reason for a change? We are pulling out of Middle East. Why did we not do it 10 years ago?
No idea. But I can tell you this. There was no way that the Army was going to change the rifle qualification during what we call the " big push " that took place around 2007/08. The reason being that if soliders did not qualify with there weapons, why would you send them to war? In the very old days soldiers could get kicked out of the Army if they didn't qualify with the M16, that would NEVER, EVER happen now. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure some people who are in the Army have probably never legitimately passed any sort of weapons qualification. ( sorry for the small rant ) There was a soldier who was killed in a firefight after attending our pre mobilization training, and the parents of the deceased, made a congressional inquiry, and investigation, they went through every bit of the paperwork, and who trained them, and what were the qualifications for the trainers, and where they trained... now imagine if that person had not qualified on his weapon, but was still sent off to a combat deployment. All Hell would break loose, especially after the Jessica Lynch incident, where her unit deployed, with no training, and all of there weapons were fucked up, and the soldiers didn't even know how to operate them. I'd go so far to say, that alone is why the Army set up 3 major regional training centers to train Army reserve soldiers before deploying overseas.