The original mounts weren't extended. Even getting it flush to the rear of the BUIS would have the mount on one section of the handguard. That's why we use extended mounts now.

What extended mounts are you using?

I am using extended mounts on my LPVOs, but Geissele doesn't seem to make the hyper extended ones anymore.
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I am happy to see your quad rail

I love this place.

Hawkins and Versace arguing with several green beanies over what's happening in the real world while they sit in their basement.

What is even more funny is all the hero worship for a guy that can't even mount his scope properly.  Any magnified system without 1X is an inferior system.  Your hero survived in spite of his optic choice, not because of it.  

Fuckin' hilarious isn't it.

Mk12's often had bridged optics and no 1x
The m16/m4 were issued with only an acog and did just fine without 1x
The only inferior thing in this thread is hawkins

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dunning and Kruger.

Haha it's not hero worship

The thread is asking about combat use of LPVOs and we have combat arms guys contributing their experiences.

Geisselle extended.

I didn't realize my eye level of eye relief was up for debate. Probably because it isn't. I doubt you do much prone shooting with armor and a helmet on.

I also didn't mount the scope, the guy that built the gun did. He seems to do just fine getting paid very well to do that for a pretty high level group of shooters.

I'm curious as to how you quantify your statement, is it through real world experience or did you just make it up?

There is a reason why Trijicon developed the top mounted RMR addition to the ACOG.  It is an admission that the ACOG is not ideal for CQB.  The ACOG alone wasn't just fine.  

Again.  Think for yourself instead of asking what others are doing.  The US military lost in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and is currently losing in Ukraine.  They are not your best hero to worship.

I have witnessed many people being put into the dirt with LPVOs over the years.   Seems like the brands/models we were using meets your requirement for Combat Ready

And LPVO's have still started to take over the combat optics arena, now for conventional forces as well. That is an admission that 1x and 4x alone are not sufficient for combat.  Combat is not CQB, CQB is a singular facet of combat. The fact that you don't understand that seems to be a critical flaw for you here, it's a result of your lack of real world experience.

My last CQB event was at 30 meters with an M2 machine gun, the last engagement I fired a rifle in was shooting an IED switch in a tree at 300. I don't think you have a firm grasp of what combat actually is.

The only time I’ve used reticle illumination is when the target was as dark or darker than my reticle, which is shockingly rare.  Even then it’s a “nice to have” instead of a “got to have it”.

It was to upgrade the built in BUIS on the OG ACOGs and add a backup sighting system to the newer ones with the top fiber. It was dudes like myself and the others you are arguing with that saw the CQB value. In fact, we were using a non-Trijicon product on top of ACOGs before the RMR was a thing, back in the early-mid 2000’s. Which is one of the things that led to the adoption of the ElCan in the SOPMOD system (well, that and it getting borrowed off 240s), and the S&B Short Dot in Delta. Magnifiers for red dots also helped us see the value of LPVOs in their infancy.

Your head is inside your asshole. Pop it out and read the fucking room.

Well I don’t have half of the combat experience as some on here do but I’ve seen acogs and aimpoints both break. Seen an acog rear lens decided to just completely shatter once while we were just sitting around getting ready to sp. Shit breaks, even if it’s “mil spec” or “duty grade” or whatever the poplar larper catch phrase of the day is.

Same deployment we would beat the shit out of our optics on our sniper rifles and they all lasted the duration of the deployment and then some. I’m sure some have failed on others but ours never did. Some of them had a good portion of the anodizing worn off, nicks and gouges, and bent bell housings and still worked fine. Bradley’s are rough on any gear.

I never used an LPVO in combat but I use one now, a lowly Viper PST II at that, and have banged it around hard enough to bend the front end of the tube and it has never lost zero or broke. I know, sample size of one, but it’s at least some sort of real world data and not merely conjecture or hyperbole like a few on here are throwing around.

I also fail to see where the battery argument is even a thing. If you’re keeping the illumination on all day long on an LPVO like you absolutely have to do with a red dot then you’re wrong. If you aren’t changing batteries out when needed then you’re wrong. This isn’t hard to do and not very expensive, and even if you fail to do that you still have an etched reticle that in fact does work very well. Welcome to the modern world, changing batteries is a thing. God forbid you have to carry a radio or nods around for a living.

When I went to Iraq in 2003 the M68’s we had at that time had nowhere near the battery life that they had when we went back in 2005. Those earlier Aimpoint”s had to have new batteries every day or two and would completely fog up with moisture at times as well, yet somehow we managed to make do. I suppose if your rifle just hangs on the wall or sits in a safe for years at a time then yeah, you’re probably gonna have a dead battery when you need it, but I suppose that comes down to personal responsibility on your part in your maintenance practices.

As for the comment that you “need” 1x? That’s absolute nonsense. I spent an entire year in Iraq without ever going below 4x magnification and never felt held back. Would a reflex sight be better suited for a close engagement? Yes, but you don’t always get a choice in your engagement distance and that red dot isn’t going to be ideal for anything except for close engagements, useable yes, but that goes both ways. At least with an LPVO if I think my most likely engagements will be close in I can set it on 1x from the get go and that’s not even mentioning having a piggyback optic. I think having a variable power scope and thinking you have to leave it on its highest magnification is like having a stereo with a volume knob and always bitching that it’s too loud. Have a sense of your surroundings and adjust as needed, and if you’re wrong guess what, you can still make do the same as you have to make do with a red dot at extended ranges. And I know, people on here like to say how they can make head shots with a red dot at 300 yards standing on one leg all day in hurricane force winds while knitting a sweater but it’s just simply not that easy in real life under stress with moving targets. And if you say you’re just gonna use a magnifier behind the red dot then you’re back to having to do no different than twisting a lever on an LPVO to change magnification.

And I surely am not saying an LPVO is the end all be all, or that it should be the only option, or that other optics might not be better suited for certain situations. What I am saying is the people that have zero or very limited real world experience that are just outright dismissing them have no clue to what they’re talking about. They obviously bring something to the table that other optics don’t and they work well and have proven to be durable. To say otherwise is just extremely biased and short sighted.

Would love more useful information and less bickering here...

Since we have all this unsubstantiated "data" flying around to counter real world experience....id love to hear some of the estimates on what percentage of combat consists of CQB requiring a dedicated 1x optic?

More info.....

Service members on the ground didn’t lose that war, politicians thousands of miles away that know nothing about it, yet telling them how to do it, did.

Which is more than a little ironic given the context here.

THANK you. So many of these threads devolve into dumb spats.

Enjoying the post and the world knowledge as well. Both civilian and military.

I have been looking at etched reticles for a while and my options. I like that if a battery fails, I still have a useful reticle. I'm thinking about changing the optic on my AUG over to an LPVO. I typically use my bullpup rifles more than I do my AR's and AK's. I had a stroke that left me with muscle weakness, plus a neck injury, and bullpup rifles just work better for me and my muscle fatigue.

I really wish I could figure out a way to find the old post where hawkins under his old screen name was arguing with stukas87, and 45-Seventy, literally saying almost identical insults and using his non experienced arguments as he is here.

Every time he posts here I feel like I've gone back in a Time Machine to those days.

Unfortunately due to the site erasing screen names for our protection in the archives there's no way that's going to happen. Hopefully the mods will have a way to figure it out, but this guy got banned here before for some of his same shenanigans and the more and more he talks and post here the more and more I am sure of it.

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Next time they upgrade this site I really wish they could add a like button here
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Ironically, If I remember correctly, those "time machine" posts you mentioned were over the VCOG.

First time seeing HawkinsID completely shit up a tech thread with 'tales from moms basement', huh?

We have SME's discussing the exact topic the OP was asking about, and he writes it off as "hero worship", then insinuates that nobody should listen to them because of politics.

How he still has an account here is absolutely beyond me.

You could be correct, and wasn't it also about stukas87's article he linked about LPVO's being used in the GWOT?. I think he may have also written the article maybe?

Hawkins under his old username used the exact words "Hero worship" in that thread also.

Thank goodness. So, if this thread is still salvageable, I don’t know why we are lumping LPVOs together as a category as reliable or not. Good ones are insanely robust, bad ones break if you look at them funny. Same as any other class of optic.

It’s been said before but I’ve seen and personally experienced broken Aimpoint and ACOG optics. Anything can fail. I’d rather trust a Nightforce LPVO (or Nightforce whatever-PVO) over a Barska RDS.

I just ordered a LPVO with an eye relief listed as 3.7"-3.9". I want to use a Geissele mount too. What are the chances that I'd need the extended one? Of course, that's the one I can't seem to find in stock anywhere.

I have a personal ATACR that isn't as far forward, but I don't shoot it with armor and helmet on.  

An extended would probably be better but a regular mount would get you to the edge of the receiver. At worst possibly slightly past onto the handguard, which I never had an issue with while using a solid handguard.

Thank you! I appreciate the input. The handguard I have on that particular rifle is a Daniel Defense M4A1 RIS II.

Yup, and it's pretty evident when running all 3 of those that the VCOG feels the most durable, albeit hard to say without extensive testing.

This is the answer to so many questions.  Murphy's Law should be a subset of the Laws of Physics, and planning for Murphy should be SOP.  

I would get an extended just to be safe. If the extended puts the optic too far forward, you can always move the mount further back on the receiver. I run all my LPVOs further forward as I run my stocks a little shorter.

Here is my rifle with a Nightforce NX8.

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Anyway those handguards are super sturdy. Between that and a solid one piece mount I’d bet the optic would be fine through most anything that wouldn’t also destroy the rifle/shooter.

That’s all a far cry from using separate rings to bridge the optic across a generic quad rail.

Don't forget "Schultz's Law". It says, "Murphy was an optimist"!

Nice! I've ordered a Geissele extended mount from Eurooptic but it's backordered right now. I'm willing to wait because it's $265 there and $325 everywhere else I found it. In the meantime, I've got an ADM quick release mount that will work.

The extended is the way to go if one had to pick one. Well, I should be specific. The one that centers the optic in the mount at the correct length to properly shoulder the rifle with correct eye relief is the correct mount. But I’m saying that it’s the most flexible. Between mounting the mount a slot or two to the rear, and sliding the optic forward in the mount, one can mount most anything to an extended length mount. Whereas the standard may not push an LPVO forward enough, or a hyperextended unnecessarily pushes a regular scope too far forward, etc.

I use a TR24 in a Warne mount on my Aug.

I wouldn't even know how to define "combat ready." What does that even mean?

Fact is that anything can be broken. If you want to break something and haven't, you just haven't tried hard enough.

Is an LPVO as tough as an ACOG? Heck no. ACOG is 7075 forged aluminum. Most LPVO are made of a 6061 extrusion. LPVOs also have far more moving parts, but LPVOs can be tough enough. It's a matter of what you're willing to trade off in exchange for the capabilities that come with an LPVO.

All I'm looking for is an LPVO that is "Tony ready."  The only thing I've found so far that doesn't get messed up during what I would call normal use, is the ACOG.

That doesn't mean that I don't use LPVOs. It only means that if I could only have one and it has to last the rest of my life, odds are that an ACOG would survive better than anything else for me.

I can appreciate this comment.

For starters, so as not to give the wrong impression, I am not nor have I ever been military.  I've never seen combat.  All I have experience with is competition shooting, specifically 3-Gun.  I've been shooting 3-gun for nearly 10 years now.  And I'm a mid-pack shooter, not the best.  With all that firmly stated, your statement is exactly what more people who buy firearms etc need to rememeber.  I will never be a door kicker.  I'll never go down range.  My specific set of circumstances means that my rifles will at best be used to defend myself, my family and my home.  The most combat scenario I'm likely to face is going to be around my home and worst case rioters.  (That's not likely because I'm pretty rural too.)  SO, what optic is "combat ready" to me is different from what might be to someone else.

If the intent of the initial question is to delve into the role of military combat readiness, I think that's been beat to death, but it's been an interesting read.

If the intent is average joe self-defense readiness....  I'd say more than ready.  I know competition shooting is not anywhere near the battlefield and would never think to compare them.  But competition may be closer to the actual "crucible" of the average joe's expectation for "combat".  Many competition stages are designed to replicate potential self-defense/home defense scenarios.  We abuse our gear in competition.  Maybe not military infantry privates abuse, but they get their fair share of being dropped and thrown.  I've broken rifles in competition.  I've competed with red dots, eotechs, and LPVOs.  The king on the competition circuit is the LPVO.  Period.  Even in the open divisions it's LPVO (with a 45 deg offset red dot).  This is in NO WAY intended to imply that these optics are ready for anything and every possibility.  BUT, they are more stout than some in this thread give credit for.  I've dumped my rifle so hard in a dump box that the aluminum magnification throw lever broke off.  The LPVO stayed zeroed.  A good LPVO can take enough abuse that the "Tony's" and the other average joes will be fine with them if they are needed for defense.

Well said.

Yes, well said. And on personally owned guns, I’ve broken two mag levers (P4Xi), an illumination knob (P4Xi, smashed), and a mount (Scalarworks gen 1* with a PLX 1-8). Those optics still worked, and the one in the broken mount ring was still hitting 8” steel at 200yds. I shot field matches with top-3 overall scores with the P4Xi with the smashed illumination knob. They’ve fallen, been dropped, and been stacked in the bed of a side-by. Both the VCOG and the P4Xi have been knocked off a table. All have ridden loose in the bed of a truck. I used my P4Xi at work for a while, too.

My PLx took a spill from a dirtbike on concrete:

*Scalarworks Gen 1 was notoriously frail. They replaced mine with the new one, which has held up.

This is a great post and matches my experience.  Usually, when I see LPVO problems, it's from heavy use and not impact damage whether it's the Leupold/Razor battery contacts weakening causing flickering illumination or the Swaro throw lever seizing up or the Trijicon TR24's not holding zero anymore or turning into kaleidoscopes.  Comp shooters shoot way more than anyone that I know.

@RogerRoger

Wait, was the rifle strapped to you at the time of the spill or did it just fall off a parked bike in the driveway? I can’t judge you if you’ve been riding a dirt bike on pavement. I’ve ridden mine a few miles down the road a couple times.

I wiped out on a wet paved area, slowish, because I’m dumb, riding one handed with a (unloaded) rifle.