My Colt AR Builds To Date/ Post Your Tac-Rifles!

[Yournamehere]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I have seen set up like this so it's not completely inaccurate of the period you're trying to emulate. But despite the light potentially messing with the balance, you can just get a smaller light, mount it to the right and add a pressure switch for it. Don't forget excessive tape on it.

There aren't really any smaller lights from the early stages of Iraq that I could find. Most lights were the Gen 2 M951/M952 or the Gen 2 and 3 M961/M962. I actually have an M962 in a box for another older clone build. That thing is basically the size of a lightsaber hilt, or a D cell Maglite that went on a diet and got skinny. In the later years you'll see Insight pistol lights on quad rails and some of those Surefire M900V vert grip lights but those can get a bit pricey, and their performance is eh, even not considering contemporary light standards.

M951s are cool though in that you can get LED drop ins for them to give them competitive brightness even by today's standards. That one in the pic as a Malkoff M61 which gives the light 325 lumens for 1.5 hours. Granted that's half as efficient as an M300 Scout which does about that with one battery instead of two, but it puts out the lumen count which is nice. I may just put the old P60 lamp back in there just to be true to the times, though.

[Spartan198]

I don't have a fancy AR to post, but I always wanted an AR6721 (or similar 16" HB carbine) configured like the one on the box art of Ghost Recon: Island Thunder.

[Excalibur]

So you want the carrying handle still attached with an ACOG on it? I think the reason why that set up existed is because of the period it was in with flat top ARs only just starting to become the norm and accessories for ARs account for the carrying handle.

[Yournamehere]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

So you want the carrying handle still attached with an ACOG on it? I think the reason why that set up existed is because of the period it was in with flat top ARs only just starting to become the norm and accessories for ARs account for the carrying handle.

Oddly enough, the rifle in the cover artwork has a detachable carry handle. There's a reason for that, though. If you decide to use a carry handle, you have your standard iron sights to use as well as the ACOG and it's iron sights if you want. The only issue is that there's a ridiculous amount of height over bore and parallax margin with the optic in that configuration.

I toyed with getting an ACOG TA01NSN, but even as the cheaper alternative to the TA31RCO, it's still expensive, even on eBay.

[Excalibur]

They did this in the 2003 SWAT movie. Looking back, I wondered why? I think nowadays, if you want a sights to close range alongside a long range scope, you can doctor a red dot on top of an ACOG or scope or offset sights.

[Spartan198]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

They did this in the 2003 SWAT movie. Looking back, I wondered why? I think nowadays, if you want a sights to close range alongside a long range scope, you can doctor a red dot on top of an ACOG or scope or offset sights.

The weapons in the movie were configured after what actual LAPD SWAT used at the time and 2003 was when the accessory market had really only started to take off. Even ACOGs were relatively new at the time, with the military only beginning to use them on a large scale in or around 2000. In fact, the ACOG was originally purpose-built to affix to carry handles. At that time, piggybacking optics had yet to come into fashion. A story I heard (not sure if it's true or not) was that Trijicon started making ACOG/red dot combos after seeing a soldier's ACOG that he had simply glued a red dot sight on top of.

The configuration is a bit dated today with all the multi-magnification, piggyback, and offset options, but like fixed carry handles and the old triangular A1 handguards, it still has its charms.

[commando552]

Originally Posted by Spartan198

The weapons in the movie were configured after what actual LAPD SWAT used at the time and 2003 was when the accessory market had really only started to take off. Even ACOGs were relatively new at the time, with the military only beginning to use them on a large scale in or around 2000. In fact, the ACOG was originally purpose-built to affix to carry handles. At that time, piggybacking optics had yet to come into fashion. A story I heard (not sure if it's true or not) was that Trijicon started making ACOG/red dot combos after seeing a soldier's ACOG that he had simply glued a red dot sight on top of.

The configuration is a bit dated today with all the multi-magnification, piggyback, and offset options, but like fixed carry handles and the old triangular A1 handguards, it still has its charms.

In 2003 there were mounts for fitting Docters to ACOGs made by KAC, but it was still an experimental thing and not really done by anybody yet on a large scale. ACOGs do have iron sights, but they are kind of terrible only being useful at very short ranges due to the massive aperture and post and terrible sight radius. Trijicon would not make their own red dot and ACOG mounts until 2007.

According to the official Trijicon history page, ACOGs were officially adopted by the US Special Forces in 1995, the USMC in 2004, and the US army in 2007. Apparently the first people to use them were GSG9 who started fitting them to SG550s in 1993.