Eotech Sights still have an edge
I personally can’t trash Eotech sights or Trijicon or Aimpoint. There are a few other optics that I have personally worked with that are moving up to that category, and that’s just my personl opinion about worthiness. I haven’t spent time in the Canadian Military, Russian Military or Royal Forces to talk about what they are using, but durability means its going to last. When I look at all of the internal technological changes that many of these optics have had, even a good design, when fielded, will have its weak points. Just think about how much of an improvement the M14 was over the M1 Garand, but as soon as the M14 was fielded in Vietnam, the M14 stocks swelled and just didn’t hold up in that climate that changes needed to be made. There are plenty of arguments about how bad the M16 did in Artic testing so don’t think desert warfare is the same as Artic. Even snow speeders had trouble adapting to cold.
Remember that trying to have a perfect cheekweld in real world conditions isn’t always possible, cutting corners, climbing stairs and running full speed is something you might want to do, movement is important to survival and the Eotech Sights have a very unique holographic gun sight. It’s not a dot that you can easily loose track of depending on it’s brightness and this was copied after the F16 fighter gun sight because they knew that with all of the ducking and weaving that a fighter pilot would be engaging in that it’s impossible to have your head completely still. Just moving a half inch back and forth with iron sights means not having a sight picture or losing your target. The batteries don’t run as long as a Trijicon SRS sight or the Aimpoint Patrol Rifle Optic, but it might be the best and fastest sighting system for you.
The Trijicon NSN has iron sights mounted on the top of the rifle scope which can come in handy in closer situations and are a less expensive alternative to mounted a red dot on your ACOG. That is worth the money if you are in the line of work that calls for it, but for general blasting and plinky, I think that $1800 optics is a bit much. The Eotech 512 is probable my recommended optic for an M4. I think people can get carried away with optics on the M4 because even though the rifle is pretty accurate, it really is not very powerful or effective past 200yds. With a growing selection of combat optics you can put on the AR15 type rifles, one other suggestion I have for shooters is to always keep your iron sights on the rifle. I’ve seen a few people show up at classes with just an Eotech mounted and they complained the front sight blocked their FOV. Well, taking a 200yd shot with an Eotech that has a dead battery is like parking a mini van from the furthest back seat.
I remember the days when I would stare at rifle scopes and ask shooters how much they cost, and when they told me how the rifle scopes cost, I’d calculate that whichever rifle I was thinking about putting the scope on, the cost of the rifle was less than the cost of the optic. I have no idea how much money companies are making off of some optics, but there is a certain point that I really don’t care how good people think they are, 90% of people spending that kind of money on optics probable could get the job done with something that cost 50%-75% less. In all of my years of target shooting and plinking, I have only had scope mount issues and 2 rifle scopes that ever broke. Every rifle scope that broke cost less than $100. I have a few Leupolds that have been on bolt actions and semi-autos and they all hold zero and have excellent clarity.