Holographic weapon sights grip the U.S. military market.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana
• Position: Eotech Inc.

The U.S. Special Operations Command, Army and Marine Corps are buying holographic weapon sights and shipping them in large quantities to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The only company that makes the scopes currently has strengthened its hold on the market with multi-million dollar contracts for some 77,000 of the sights.

Eotech Inc., based in Ann Arbor, Mich., touts itself as the company that invented, designed and manufactured the first electro-optic sighting system to apply holographic technology to small and medium-sized weapons.

A hologram is a three-dimensional image formed by the interference of light beams.

The Eotech holographic weapon sight projects an illuminated reticle pattern directly on the target. A reticle is a network of fine threads or lines in the focal plane of a scope to help accurate observation.

However, no forward light is projected from the sight; it is just the appearance of light. The laser technology projects an image onto a hardened piece of glass, just as in heads-up displays in fighter jets and helicopters.

Together with Bushnell--a company known to many for its microscopes and binoculars-Eotech released a commercial version of the holographic sights in 1996. The combat version began trickling into the military at the end of 2001, said Patrick Gallagher, Eotech's government representative.

The company first targeted SOCOM with its technology, said Van Donohue, Eotech's vice president for marketing. In the past two years, the company has sold 5,500 sights to individual special operations units, which bought the technology with their own funds, said Donohue. A sight can cost between $300 and $350, he said.

Meanwhile, the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Crane, Ind., awarded Eotech a $16.6 million contract in May for 66,666 enhanced combat optical sights. This capability provides for lightweight, waterproof optical sighting devices for battle at close quarters, as well as out to 600 meters. The work is expected to be completed by 2009.

Eotech is presenting its holographic sights as an alternative to the "red dot" technology, already battle-tested and...