The Washington Post makes the case that while the Army and Special Ops have moved to more powerful sniper rifles in response to new threats on the battlefield the Marines haven’t to keep their old sniper rifle builders and maintainers in business.

This is not necessarily new.  Look at the M1 Garand, red dot optics, the M4.  Each was adopted after other organizations/branches had embraced them primarily because of traditional Marine Corp reasons (e.g. the M1 wasn’t as reliable/accurate as the 1903 Springfield, iron sights are adequate, the M4 is less accurate or useful in crowd control).  I hope the Marines get what they need but they aren’t infallible in procuring weapons and suffer some of the same mistakes the other branches have.  This is probably why some may be so surprised.