Dot Tactical

Recent Developments In Reflex Sights

Since 9-11, US forces have type classified a range of reflex and red dot sights for their individual weapons. Even the US Marines, which steadfastly stuck with iron sights on all but sniper rifles until a few years ago, has now gone to universal issue for all Marines issued with shoulder weapons as well as putting them on its new Squad Automatic Weapon, the M27, the old M249 and the M240. The US Army has gone to universal issue with its M68 CCO (as of 2009 an Aimpoint CompM4s) and is giving dedicated riflemen TA31RCO-M150 ACOGs.The M145 is the US Army’s equivalent to the ACOGs on USMC M249s and M240s and is a rubber protected 3.4×28 unit with a reticle calibrated to 1200 meters, doing away with the problematic external range cam mount of the original adopted by Canada.

One surprising feature is that all of the sights employed by US forces were developed entirely by private companies, usually entirely with their own money. The civil market drove much of the development of these scopes, armed citizenry being a huge force for progress in this sector. This trend will continue to drive weapon sight development for the forseeable future.

Aimpoint claims to have 70,000,000 of its sights in service world-wide and has brought a new Micro range of red dot sights with 4 MOA red dots. The Aimpoint Micro T-1 magnifier is only 2.4 inches long and weighs in at only 3.7 ounces with its thumb nut Picatinny rail mount and battery. That is small enough to replace iron sights without adding weight, or to mount on typical semiautomatic pistols.  No matter what firearm you have or mounting configuration you want, Aimpoint or aftermarket suppliers like La Rue Tactical or GG&G will have mounts to match it. These sights give astonishing battery lives of approximately five years of continuous operation. In conjunction with flip-to-side or demountable magnifiers like the Eotech G23 magnifier it makes an extremely compact and versatile package covering targets out to perhaps four hundred meters. At greater ranges the 4 MOA dot starts to obscure too much of the target.

Not to be left behind, Eotech have vastly reduced the size of their unique holographic weapon sights resulting in the new XPS and EXPS ranges. These use a single transversely mounted CR123 battery to achieve battery lives in the order of 600 hours of continuous operation – a huge improvement on their old ‘N’ battery powered units. Lasers use a lot more battery power than the LEDs used in Aimpoints, but result in a totally parallax free sight picture that can be used should it appear anywhere in the sighting window – even if the rest of the window is obscured by mud or snow or completely shattered. The Eotech avoids the large dot problem by using a 1 MOA dot for fine aiming at longer distances centered in a 65 MOA circle for rapid target acquisition and centering close up. The XPS-2 XPS-3 and EXPS-3 series are inevitably larger and heavier than the Aimpoint Micros at 3.5 inches long and 8 to 11 ounces and are possbily less robust, although a new, tethered screw cap with an O-ring makes battery housings spontaneously detaching a thing of the past.  The XPS-3 and EXPS-3 models are NV compatible and the EXPS-3 series transfers its buttons to the side to allow very close mounting of NV. Its QR mount (unique to the EXPS – other models have thumb nuts) also places it 7mm higher to enable co witnessing of BIUS in the bottom 1:3 of the aiming window.

MW2 Favela – FAL / PP2000 Red Dot Tactical Nuke