Aimpoint: The Unique Origins of the Red Dot Sight

There are many famous companies that got their start in garages and basements, but Aimpoint’s origin story is quite unique. You can track its genesis back to a bathroom and its first prototype back to a toilet paper roll.

Arne Ekstrand was shaving in a concave mirror one morning, and there was a candle on a shelf behind him. Moving his head around, he realized he could see the flame of the candle no matter the position of his head, and he was doing it all with both eyes open. Ekstrand was a hunter and a sport shooter who had done his military service. He thought this would be a good way of aiming.

Ekstrand constructed a prototype using a toilet paper roll, a lens in front, a diode inside, and a battery to power it on the outside of the tube. Like every man would, he secured everything with duct tape. When holding it up and looking through it, Ekstrand saw that it worked, a proof of concept for his idea of an electronic sight. He eventually joined up with Gunnar Sandberg, an entrepreneur and investor and founder of ElektroSandberg. 

Sandberg was also a hunter and sport shooter, and he was convinced Ekstrand had a winning concept. He invested in Ekstrand and his idea and set up space for Ekstrand to work on the project in a basement on Borrgatan in Malmö’s harbor. The two gentlemen patented the optic that Ekstrand developed, and Aimpoint AB was founded in February 1975. 

That first optic was the Aimpoint Electronic. This was the world’s first commercial electronic red-dot sight. The Electronic is a tube sight with lenses, a bright red dot, and a battery compartment on the right side. It sits low and was designed for hunting and sport shooting. In Sweden, hunting is often done on moving game, and having a sight/optic that is simpler and faster than iron sights and allows you to keep both your eyes open while aiming was a definite advantage.

The Aimpoint Electronic was a huge success. In fact, you can still find examples of the optic in use around the world. Three generations of the Electronic were produced: the G1, G2, and G3.

In 1987, the Electronic was replaced by the newest model of Aimpoint optics, the 1000. The 1000 was smaller and had a longer-lasting battery. Just as Aimpoint worked to improve the Electronic through its various generations, they did so with the 1000. Subsequent models such as the Aimpoint 3000 and 5000 offered increased durability and battery life.

Aimpoint’s roots are in hunting. It was Sweden’s hunting traditions and the active, mobile style of hunting that proved the necessity of a red dot. As their optics grew tougher and battery life increased, their use expanded beyond practical IPSC and 3-Gun “combat style” shooting popular in the U.S. and around the world, reaching elite military units.

In 1991, around the time of the first Gulf War, a photo emerged that got Aimpoint a lot of attention. General Norman Schwarzkopf was photographed visiting Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, accompanied by his protection detail. These men were believed to be part of the U.S. Army’s most elite unit, SFOD-D (Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta), otherwise known as Delta Force. The carbines those men were carrying sported Aimpoint 3000 and 5000 red dots atop their carry handles. Prior to that, many people didn’t think electronic optics were durable enough for military use, but sure enough, Delta Force was using them.  

In October 1993, the U.S. military found itself in the biggest gunfight since the Vietnam war during Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia, known to most people as the Black Hawk Down incident. Involving U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force, the incident lasted nearly two days and saw the American forces battling thousands of enemy combatants.

Many of the Delta Force operators were using Aimpoint 5000 optics on their carbines and rifles. Most famously, both Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and SFC Randy Shughart, killed during the incident (and the first soldiers since Vietnam to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor), had Aimpoint 5000s on their rifles. Gordon’s carbine, with its carry handle-mounted Aimpoint 5000, became the focus of attention. Now, everyone knew that not only were elite troops using Aimpoint red dots, but those optics were combat proven. The U.S. military officially became interested.

In 1997, after a procurement process that took several years and involved exhaustive trials, Aimpoint won a government tender. They were to supply 80,000 new CompM optics to the U.S. military. This was a challenge for a company producing 10,000 optics a year. In 1998, a new factory was opened in Malmö to increase manufacturing capacity of the CompM series.

Technology began to change. Prior to 1997, LED emitters were big and bulky, and if you wanted a small dot, you painted over the diode or put a cover in front of it with a smaller hole. As smaller diodes were introduced, Aimpoint began using a computer chip to control the size of the dot.

The CompM2 was designated by the U.S. military as the M68 CCO (Close Combat Optic), and with the Global War on Terror beginning in 2001, Aimpoint red dots on military M4 carbines became common. In 2007, Aimpoint won another U.S. military procurement for red-dot sights. This time, it was for 565,000 units of the new CompM4, which used a AA battery that was both more common than the M2’s DL1/3N and longer-lasting, with an advertised run time of eight years. Soon, optics became the rule rather than the exception on military rifles as they replaced iron sights on the modern battlefield. 

Also in 2007, Aimpoint launched the Micro. Its origin was interesting. In 2004, Brügger & Thomet (B&T), a Swiss-based arms company, bought the rights for the Steyr MP9 and renamed/relaunched it as the TP9. B&T wanted Aimpoint to design an OEM optic for the 9mm PDW, something smaller than the Comp series. At the same time, having their roots still firmly in the hunting world, the folks at Aimpoint noticed that the Blaser rifle was becoming popular in Europe. The Blaser used a saddle optic mount, and Blaser shooters wanted a red-dot optic that was smaller than the Comp.

For both the TP9 and the Blaser, they wanted an optic that was as thin as possible, so the decision was made to use the coin-type CR2032 battery. Since its power consumption/requirements were a new animal, Aimpoint engineers had to change their diode technology and develop a new controller chip for the first-generation Micro.

The first and subsequent generations of the Micro were smaller and lighter than the Comp series optics but were just as tough and had the same or better battery life. They became the standard for cutting-edge carbine electro-
optics almost from their introduction.

Several years later, Karl Brügger of B&T once again reached out to Aimpoint. B&T was developing their USW — Universal Service Weapon — a 9mm that was little more than a large pistol with a telescoping stock attached to a slightly enlarged frame. For the USW, B&T wanted Aimpoint to develop an optic smaller than the Micro. In 2016, images of a prototype of that optic leaked — the Aimpoint Nano. About the same time, the popularity of slide-mounted pistol optics began to increase. Enter the Aimpoint ACRO.

Erik Jeppsson, vice president of sales & marketing worldwide for Aimpoint, was in charge of the ACRO P-1 development. As he explains, “The Nano was designed specifically for the B&T USW, and we put a lot of effort into it. It worked well on the USW due to the fact that it was sitting on the frame, not the slide. Once we got the USW into production, we started testing it on slides as well, and it wasn’t durable enough to handle the recoil forces.”

The project to develop the second generation of the Nano is what produced the ACRO P-1 in 2018. Jeppsson explained, “We looked at where the weak points were on other pistol optics and where we could improve ours. There was nobody guaranteeing their optic could withstand 10,000 or even 5,000 rounds. We’d heard rumors slide-mounted pistol optics break very often. So, we went into the project with the thought that our optic needed to withstand 20,000 rounds of .40 S&W. That’s the crucial number, the benchmark, and it helped us leap in front of everybody.”

Aimpoint had several in-house requirements. First, it had to be an enclosed sight like the Nano. Second, it had to be submersible to 25 meters. Third, it had to endure 20,000 rounds of .40 S&W during testing. Aimpoint’s insistence that their pistol optic had to be as durable as their carbine optics made it a stand-out in an already crowded field. 

One of the secrets of the durability of the ACRO is the unique mount. It uses a crossbolt system similar to the Nano. No screws, just the bolt bearing on a lug built into the body of the optic that absorbs the recoil. This means the whole housing of the sight absorbs the recoil.

At the time of its introduction, the Aimpoint ACRO was the first enclosed sight specifically built to mount on a pistol slide. These days, enclosed pistol optics are all the rage (and considered superior), but the Aimpoint was the first and still considered the best by many.

A redesign of the ACRO a few years later resulted in the P-2. It addressed a few consumer complaints and resulted in longer battery life and the ability to mount flip-up lens covers, which is important to those mounting the ACRO on carbines, shotguns, and SMGs. Even though it is physically smaller than the Micro, the window of the ACRO is actually bigger, and it is built just as tough. The successful ACRO line has been expanded to include the specialty S-2 meant for shotgun barrel ribs and the C-2 for carbines.

Aimpoint’s insistence on the durability of a mounting system was the formative principle in developing their latest optic, the COA. The COA is an enclosed pistol sight that is substantially smaller than the ACRO while having a window just as large. Designed with and for Glock pistols, the mounting system is as unique as the optic itself. The front of the optic body inserts into a lip machined into the pistol’s slide. The rear of the optic body is locked down by the rear sight of the pistol itself. The mounting solution is called the A-CUT. It’s doubtful that any company other than Aimpoint would have had the muscle to get Glock onboard with a new optic/mount program. However, by combining the most popular pistol brand with the most popular red-dot brand in the world will undoubtedly result in a paradigm shift for the pistol optics industry.

Even after 50 years, Aimpoint continues to innovate, which is why they are still considered the leader in red-dot optics.