By Terry Houin
As our regular readers know, I’ve been a fan and longtime user since my initial introduction to the Aimpoint family via the 5000 during summer camp with my Navy brethren. We slapped them on our flat-top M4s and ran house drills. Shooting with both eyes open was a game changer, even if we still got smoked for being slow, loud, and brand-new. That rough start with the OG Aimpoint 5000 kicked off a long relationship—through CompMs on deployment to Micro T’s tucked on smaller, more clandestine packages.
And I wasn’t alone. From ’98 through 2015, Aimpoint was a fixture in the Special Operations optics game. The CompM2 became the Army’s M68 CCO and went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The CompM3 stretched battery life, the CompM4 gave us AA power and nearly a decade of runtime, and the Micro T-1 showed up as the lightweight, bombproof option that found its way onto everything from carbines to sniper rifles.
Bottom line—Aimpoints were on my guns, and we trusted them because they flat-out worked. I did then, and I still do.
New Issue: Aimpoint DUTY RDS MR
The new Aimpoint DUTY RDS MR carries the same DNA that made me fall in love with Aimpoints back in ’98, but adds some modern tricks. It’s still compact, still bombproof, but now you can choose your reticle, which is a first for Aimpoint—2-MOA dot, 65-MOA circle, or both with a simple, long push on the intensity button. That flexibility isn’t just marketing; it’s practical. Run the circle for fast CQB work, strip it down to the 2 MOA for distance or precision drills, or keep both if you like having the circle for quick target acquisition and then dialing in for the tight shot with the dot.
Like most of the Aimpoint lineup, the Duty RDS MR has the ability to quickly scroll up or down in brightness, having eight daylight settings and four night vision settings using the protected adjustment buttons. So there’s no worries about your gear messing with your settings during training or operations.
Aimpoint also borrowed a page from the “always on” playbook. After two hours of sitting idle, the sight slips into sleep mode but snaps awake the second you move it. That means no more fumbling with buttons when things get interesting. Power comes from a single CR2032 that delivers about three years of runtime on a mid setting—plenty for a hard-use optic.
Durability hasn’t gone soft either. Pressure-forged aluminum housing, waterproof to 80 feet, tested against shock, vibration, and the kind of temperature swings that cook most gear. It’s built for cops, military, and anyone else who doesn’t get a do-over when their gear fails.
Duty-Ready Gear
In short, the DUTY RDS MR isn’t just a new red dot—it’s Aimpoint keeping its promise to professionals: rugged, simple, and ready for work.
For initial testing, I’ve got the Duty RDS MR riding on my 5.56mm Honey Badger SBR, paired with the 3X-P magnifier. That combo lets me run targets from point-blank out to about 400 yards on man-sized steel without breaking a sweat. Later this year I’ll throw a laser and light on it and transition the setup into a dedicated pig gun/truck gun. The whole rig is compact enough to disappear into a small pack or slide under the seat—perfect for those nights when a sounder of hogs shows up in the back pasture and you don’t have time to dig around in the safe.
Pros – Durable and reliable like we’ve come to expect from Aimpoint. Multi-reticle is a nice featurem as I’ll mainly run the circle-dot combo and the single dot about 30% of the time. Compact size that still allows for a usable FOV.
Cons – Haven’t found any yet, but I’ll let you know if I find one.
