Let me first mention something that I didn’t cover in the video: what does “COA” stand for? Well, nothing. They just wanted a name that they could trademark that wasn’t already in use. So go ahead and make up your own acronym.
It may be hard to see how a pistol red dot sight could be exciting, but if you’re into this sort of the, the new Aimpoint COA has some really neat features. Specifically:
* Really excellent mounting system that fixed the problems of recoil lugs and screw holes into the delicate bits of pistol slides
* Improved software with things like automatic brightness step-down to maintain battery life
* Reduced width, essentially taking the Acro and removing the outer shell.
* Automated assembly, to reduce end user cost.
The project has been a collaboration with Glock, and so Glock has the exclusive use of the COA for the first year, starting now. After that, Aimpoint will release the A-cut specifications to industry for everyone else to use.
Disclaimer: I don’t have a COA myself, unless they decide to give me one after this video publishes. I went to Aimpoint on my own dime (thanks, Patreon!) to film the funky and cool PDW they built in 1979 (that video is coming soon), and they asked if I wanted to see the secret new thing while I was there. So of course I said yes, and this video is the result.
It’s a great system and I’m sure it’s superior to the RMR cut, but how many pistols will have enough “meat” in their slides to allow for a cut like that? If you can only use it on Glocks, good for them, but some folks like to shoot other guns. I hope it isn’t some dumb scheme to corner a market that’ll cripple both companies when it doesn’t work.
Ian, have you got an opportunity to handle the Savage Stance 2.0? They also came up with a novel solution which is a 100% screw-free MRD mount, where you just slip the sight in (actually hook one side and cant the rest until it clicks).
“(…)hard to see how a pistol red dot sight could be exciting(…)”
Did they manage to secure any patent w.r.t. said improvements?
The acronym COA means “circle of awareness” in the accompanied freefall system of skydiving instruction (AFF). COA starts with the student looking at the instructor on his/her right side, then the instructor on the left side, then the altimeter on the student’s left wrist and finishes with looking forward at the horizon.
These sorts of sights aren’t going to be a full replacement solution until and unless they’re the same size and footprint as the iron sights and project the red dot through some sort of holographic arrangement. Until then, that blocky goddamn excresence on top of the slide is just too damn big, too blocky, and entirely too much trouble. Try sticking one of those stupid ‘effing things under your jacket, and then drawing it… You’ve gone from a situation wherein there’s not all that much to catch on the stuff you’re wearing to one where you’ve bolted a damn brick onto the top of the slide, which is going to catch on everything. Don’t even ask about putting the resultant abortion into your pocket…
This reminds me of the days when everyone was slapping lasers and lights onto everything; what might have a place in your “bedroom gun” is absolutely irrelevant to an actual carry piece. For that, you need something that hasn’t got all kinds of extraneous crap bolted onto it, and which is rock-stupid simple to use.
I mean, seriously… For the love of God, Aimpoint hasn’t even bothered to ramp the front and back of this thing to “melt” it into the slide. That idiotic thing is going to be a magnet for anything and everything on the way out of the draw, and will likely result in getting a lot of people killed while they try to untangle their pistol from concealment. On a duty pistol, this thing might not be a totally stupid solution, but on the guns they’ve put it on? WTF? Are you people high on psychedelics?
amen same logic applies to flash lights on the gun. I was taught that in dark, people shoot at the light, which you now hold in front of your face!
From one tacticool pistol+lights book, there is a suggestion (kinda more variation of a stance) of holding the f.light in your left hand high above yourself at 45degrees, thus drawing the potential fire to that mostly empty area.
Of course, huge drawback is that such arm position is quickly tiring.
I see cops with Glocks that have been so heavily “tacticooled” that they look bigger and clumsier than Judge Dredd’s Lawgiver (any version). I also see that they require “holsters” I’d normally expect to see at an IPSC meet with a .38 Super “Major” high-capacity super-modified 1911 race gun in same.
Then I think of all the perps who have learned how to grab an officer’s sidearm out of even a secure holster, and I get uneasy.
Today I see officers on the street who are in worse physical condition than I am (and I’m medically retired and turn 67 tomorrow), with belts loaded down with the sidearm, Taser, spare magazines, and etc., all of them in holders just begging a perp to grab them in a scrum (which is the SOP today- scrumming, that is), and I keep waiting for reports of officers killed in the line of duty with their own weapons.
Substituting gadgetry for proper training looks good to politicians. The trouble is that in the field, it never works and sooner or later bites you in the ass.
clear ether
eon
I still think statistically one in six US officers gets killed with his/her sidearm every year, and here in Chicago my memory over some decades is of three incidents of two officers killed with a gun grabbed from a partner or nearby officer (though all of those were back in the revolver era — maybe gun retention training has improved). The much-maligned Magna-trigger might have prevented such incidents; those You-Tube yokels who claim to be able to disable them think the average criminal goes around carrying a magnet in case they can grab an officer’s gun. Magna-trigger had three advantages: it was mechanical, it was automatic, and training-wise mainly required that the officer remember to wear the accompanying magnet ring.
The Magna trigger fell out of use because magnets and computers in cruisers don’t work and play well together. Reach for the laptop keyboard with a Magna ring on your finger and the computer is likely to start singing “Mairzey Doats”.
Massad Ayoob pointed out that you need to wear two Magna rings, one on each hand, to allow weak-hand shooting. Nevertheless, most guns with the Magna trigger setup only came with one ring.
Security features just aren’t well thought out by either agencies or manufacturers. Let alone politicians carried away by visions of cyberpunk “smart guns”.
Again, it comes down to training, although accoutrements that are properly designed help too. The old “clamshell” holster for the medium-frame revolver (.38 or .357) with a four or six-inch barrel is still probably the best all-around police duty holster ever designed. It allows a proper draw but is still about the most snatch-proof holster in existence.
A clamshell holster also has the advantage of being about the fastest holster other than a front-slot with a trigger-finger break safety strap. Both allow the sidearm to be brought out forward and swung up rather than hauled out vertically and then brought back down to the correct position. This small difference has been rather obscured by the whole “Weaver Stance for all occasions” nonsense.
If you’re taking the time to “go to Weaver” at ranges under ten yards, you’re doing it wrong and you’re apt to end up missing. But “Weaver” looks good in training as it enforces uniformity. The problem is that in the field, it does not generate hits as well at close range as point shooting.
I find this curious as a retired instructor who taught Weaver and point shooting both. I have always “assumed” that the whole laser sight thing was to encourage rapid engagement and ensure proper placement, which is the entire purpose of point shooting. But apparently that’s not what’s being taught. Instead it’s “all-Weaver, all the time” on the grounds that it “looks professional”. That’s as may be, but I’m seeing magazines being emptied from Weaver at ten feet or less that are hitting all over a stopped vehicle- everywhere except where the actual target is.
That’s not how you do it.
clear ether
eon
I may have missed it but how does the sight turn on when the weapon is drawn.
You don’t turn it off; it’s always on.
I’m guessing the batteries need frequent recharging or replacement.
cheers
eon
The video explains that one CR2032 last for five years, unless you leave it on the highest brightness settings.
Meaning, if it’s set to be visible in bright light, it drains rapidly.
cheers
eon
That advertised battery life is better than all my rifle dots and orders of magnitude better than EOTech. Well within reasonable maintenance routines. I still have smoke detectors that need a 9V every year. A CR2032 that doesn’t disturb zero is no big deal.
This reminds me of “intelligent dance music” abbreviation, lol!
@eon
how come you got the fabled star ??
Of what star do you speak?
cheers
eon
Near your name, in comments above, just like mr. Ian has.
Though, catching some kind of movie or pop-star under our paws would be much more…interesting.
I just noticed that and I have no idea what it means.
cheers
eon
Oh, now it’s not there.
Maybe if you talk about it it vanishes?
cheers
eon
I’m surprised by some of the takes here.
Pistol dots clearly have a ways to go in their evolution. But dismissing their advantages because they’re not perfect yet is short-sighted (heh).
It was goofy when Delta was hose clamping Maglites to their rifles too. Yet here we are in 2025 recognizing white lights on rifles are worth having. Along with not-iron rifle sights.
The way my eyes are aging my next full sized pistol is going to have a dot on it. I was leaning toward an SRO but it’s an open emitter and I’ve read about too many breakages recently. Add in mounting plate non-sense from the factories and now is not the time.
If this Aimpoint lives up to to its potential and price point, and S&W can eventually fit it on an M&P, this seems like a winner to me.
If you’re willing to make the sacrifices necessary, as in “Carry only in holster; keep only in drawer by bed”, then these things are probably a net good.
On a concealment piece? WTF? The way this thing is designed is just asking for it to get caught in something during the draw and present phase of the operation. This is not going to help anyone defend themselves with a concealed-carry pistol; indeed, it’s going to result in people getting themselves killed.
The sad fact is that anything unnecessary that you bolt onto a concealed-carry pistol is an extraneous thing that’s going to be getting between you and killing your assailant. Until they get these things down to the point where they’re no more obtrusive than a normal set of sights, there is no place for them on a concealed pistol. I don’t know what the hell Glock or Aimpoint were thinking, but the raw fact is that these are range toys at this point.
If you could figure out how to integrate one of these sights into a slide such that it didn’t go much above the current sight height, with no projections? Then you’d have something.
Were it me, I’d design something that was effectively a saddle around the striker tunnel on the Glock, put the electronics and batteries there, and have a minimalist hood about the same size as a rear sight melted into the slide top. Anything else on a concealment pistol is just asking for trouble…
As usual a good post. But you have to remember you live in an age where guys don’t tactical gloves to film videos of themselves shooting .22 Short mini revolvers. They wouldn’t be caught dead not going all out-there and flaming and oh-so-outrageous tacti-cool. Results i
n combat? I don’t mean to throw shade sweetie, but that stuff is gross.
I call it the Hollywood syndrome. Everybody sees all this tacticool gadgetry on everything in movies and TV shows, and everybody decides they can’t function without all of it in the real world.
And oh yes, they all have to dress like Shemar Moore playing the revamped Hondo Harrelson in the revamped S.W.A.T.
Otherwise it just isn’t “real police work”- or anything else.
I somehow got along perfectly well with a 1911A1 with no modifications. When we changed to DA autos, the only mods on my S&W 645 were Pachmayr grips and taking emery paper to the “checkering” on the front and back straps; out of the box just about everything on a 645’s butt would draw blood in recoil.
My short tenure with the HK USP ended when I decided that I just couldn’t put up with a sidearm that made strange clicking sounds as bits inside shifted back and forth as I moved.
Don’t get me started on the Beretta M92FS.
Fortunately for me by that time I had enough seniority that when the new policy was 9 x 19mm , I could get away with a Browning P-35. Which I carried on to retirement.
No electronic Heath Robinsonisms on any of the above.
Yes, I have been in real, genuine IAs. And I am still here.
clear ether
eon
When I was shooting IPSC-alike courses of fire in the pistol club I belonged to, there were two general sorts of people engaged: One variety spent their money on the latest and greatest gadget/gimmickry, and the other… Bought ammunition. Lots and lots of ammunition; they’d shoot exponentially more than the other sort of shooter.
Guess who won most of the matches? We had one guy who was sort of in-between, in that he shot his HK P7 like it was going out of style, putting thousands of rounds through it in just a couple of months, but he was the sole person I’d acknowledge to bridging the two schools. He was also usually the guy with the best string in a match, period.
Gadgets or shooting more? Which produces the better result? Shooting more.
Kirk;
Back when I was first a student and then working, MilSurp .45 ACP 230-grain FMJ was $2/50 rounds and Speer Lawman 200-grain JHP duty ammunition was $14/50.
I used to go through 150 rounds of FMJ a week on the range. For me, six bucks a week was cheap entertainment.
cheers
eon
I’m just not seeing a huge improvement over existing designs.
1. Software: Existing products have a lockout mode for the buttons (Holosun)and many have automatic brightness adjustment options.
2: Zeroing: Existing products adjust zero by moving the emitter (basically every open reflex sight since the RMR). Even cheap $20 knockoffs are capable of providing the precision parts for that system.
3: Mount: Existing products already have a large recoil interface that takes shear force off of the screws. The RMR cut has a step that interfaces with the front of the sight. And there’s nothing wrong with recoil lugs. Cylindrical recoil lugs are significantly simpler and cheaper to cut and a gunsmith can do it without CNC; it just takes a mill with a rotary table and a standard end mill. This COA cut is ridiculously complex and requires special cutters. It’s like the difference between asking a gunsmith to drill and tap a receiver to accept a bolt-on picatinny rail vs. asking a gunsmith to machine a picatinny rail from scratch. It’s trying to become the standard but it’s just adding another “standard” to the ever-growing list.
It looks like a solution searching for a problem.