Aimpoint ICE: A More Aesthetic 1990s Prototype Red Dot

https://youtu.be/GfIAE4PFJyQ

During the 1990s, Aimpoint had a product developed who thought it would be good to develop a new red dot sight that had a more curved, organic look to it. The design he came up with also had some good technical elements – like separating the optical and electronic elements of the sight into two separate housings. The sight was given the name ICE, and it was developed all the way through too final pre-production units, but never actually released onto the market. Part of this was due to a public preference for ring mounts at the time, but more significant was Aimpoint’s focus on expanding to fulfill the new US Army order for hundreds of thousands of M68 Close Combat Optics. Getting that project done right was much more important than a speculative new product, and Aimpoint didn’t have the bandwidth to do both – and so Project ICE wound up shelved.