January 06, 2020
By Patrick Sweeney
The CompM2, or M68 CCO as the Army called it, served well and long, and can still serve you. You just have to accept that you will not have the compactness and battery life of more-modern designs.
Aimpoint started all this. It was an Aimpoint that Jerry used on his pistol, to beat us silly, all those years ago. And it was an Aimpoint that the U.S. Army adopted, named the M68 CCO. (Known to the rest of us as the Aimpoint CompM2.)
Adopted at the dawn of the 21st century, the M68 CCO had what now seem like drawbacks. It weighed 7.8 ounces even before you clamped it into a mount, and a mount could easily add another five or six ounces to the full-up weight. It used a three-volt lithium battery, the 2L76 or DL1/3N, not exactly common, and a bit large for the power they put out. But boy was it good for the time, and boy did both the government and the rest of us buy a metric buttload of them.
All good things run their course, and the M68 CCO was no different. Battery, LED, and optics advances made it possible to produce a smaller, lighter optic, and that’s what Aimpoint did. The last CompM2 left the factory in 2012. Before that happened, it had introduced the Micro T-1. At half the weight, even with the riser attached, it was the must-have for a number of years. But, Aimpoint did better.
The Aimpoint Micro T-2 is the apex red-dot. It is com-pact, easy to use, it has incredible battery life, and it looks good.
The Micro T-2 improved the optics, the crispness of the dot, and it even made the body of the optic more rugged. Adding even more ruggedness, Aimpoint built in fillets to the housing; ramped shoulders that protect the adjustment knob on top. No more busted optics from having the adjustment knob get caught on a doorframe or window sash.
The mount has a throw-lever clamp, and the lever is slick, in that you have to press the lever down to unlock it before you can rotate it to unlock the clamp. This isn’t going to happen accidentally.
The power settings are “off,” four settings for NVG optics, and eight daylight settings. All this and 50,000 hours of operation.
The Micro T-2 is so small that you can mount it on a carbine, forward of the regular optics position, and then easily mount a magnifier or NVG behind it. The 3.7 ounces of extra weight of the T-2 is less than the weight of the ammo in your magazine—heck, less than the empty magazine weighs.
Aimpoint.com
