Two quick points (I stopped reading the posts when you guys started arguing the M16/M14/M1 Garand thing, so I apologize if somebody already addressed this directly)...
Would a hundred hours of training for each Fighter offset some of the need for them?
I know that Cratz2 is "for" the red-dots, but I borrowed his question to add this... Yes, I suppose that 100 hours of rangetime on irons would make our guys better, but put that same effort into training on the Aimpoint, and they'd be even faster, right???
I just don't like the idea of a dot completely disappearing when the battery dies.
I think it's funny when someone says "I'd never use one of those things because they run by batteries, and batteries can die, making it useless". (No, Mr. SodaPop, I know you didn't say that... again, I'm just borrowing the quote that made me think of it) Well, as has been said, you can see right through the red-dot sights on an AR to use the front and rear sights... so if the battery goes dead... use the iron sights you'd be forced to use if you never had an aimpoint in the first place! There's just no "negative".
Besides that, the battery life on these averages between 1,000 and 10,000 hours, depending on the setting you use... Just put in fresh batteries at deployment time, and if you put your sight on HIGH power, and forget to turn it off EVER, leaving it on 24 hours a day, the battery would be dead in approximately 41 days... longer than THIS war will last
On low power, the average run time is 416 days... and according to
www.aimpoint.com, the battery can last up to 10 YEARS on "night vision" setting.
You'd have to actually USE one to see and feel how these things work. They don't feel seperate from the iron sights. You don't do anything different with the position of the weapon, etc... You just focus past the sights, onto the target, and the red dot is sitting directly on top of the front sight post... It's the neatest thing!
Here's a pic of an EoTech co-witnessing with the front sight... The rear sight is an ARMS #40, and it's folded down in the picture, but if it were up, it would look just like the sight picture on your A2, plus the red reticle.