It should be noted that my students are not taught to use the sights in shooting situations that occur at double arm's length or a bit longer, so extreme close-quarter engagements were not a factor in my project.

Rapid but precise shots on a steel target. This is what combat shooting is all about, and the high-visibility front sight can easily be seen even from this camera angle.

What I found over the last year was surprising in a few areas but not so surprising in many others. Some of the things that I will discuss in the remainder of this article may delight some while angering others. The truth is, I am after information that will help you prevail in the most extreme of circumstances.

Sight Picture
A precise sight picture, in which the front sight is sharp with the rear sight fuzzy and the target fuzzy, will not happen. This sight picture is great on a stationary range where the target is not moving and no one is shooting back at you, but when the shooter is trying to find a moving target, move from target to target or track a threat that is trying to shoot him (with Airsoft, of course), the best that can be achieved is the insertion of a contrasting image into the eye target line.

Several decades ago the late Jeff Cooper made the statement, "If you are going to use a contrasting front sight, use a color not normally found in nature," and it is as true today as it was when he originally said it. If the front sight is to interrupt the eye/target line, it cannot blend into the background. Orange, lime green, brilliant red and florescent blue all meet this requirement.

The J Point sight is shown mounted on the slide of the author's daily-carry Glock 19. When dovetailed into the slide, the J Point makes a fairly compact sight package.

Tritium Night Sights
These sights might not be the panacea that everyone believes them to be for low-light engagements. The tritium inserts found on many of these sights are fairly small, and while they do glow brightly, the environment must be pretty dark in order for them to become really visible. My concern, and the concern of those involved in the project, was this: Can the target be identified as a threat in the level of darkness that tritium sights become truly useful? If a flashlight is used to identify a threat, tritium sights do glow bright enough to be quite useful in such an inconsistent light environment.

Fiber Optics
Fiber optic sights are grossly underrated for combat applications. Many equate fiber optic sights as an accessory for hunting or archery, but my research revealed that they may be the best combat sights available. At first it was thought that these sights were only going to be useful in bright sunlight, but nothing could be further from the truth. Depending on their construction and pipe material used, the sights gathered far more light than many will give them credit for.

While all of the fiber optic sights tested were quality products, the sights from Hi-Viz were hands down the most visible of the sights used due mostly to the translucent pipe material they use as well as the open configuration of their sight mount. Ameriglo sights were found to be the most durable. With their chrome-moly 4140 steel sight housing, Ameriglo fiber optic sights will stand up to the harshest of treatment in the roughest of environments.

Some of the fiber optic sights tested used a closed design to protect the tube, which resulted in eliminating some of the light-gathering capability of the pipe. Another nice benefit of fiber optics is that they can be used in the direction of the sun, which makes regular sights hard to see; fiber optic sights just glow brighter.

To determine just how fiber optics compare to tritium sights, I placed a set of each side by side on the slide of a Glock pistol and asked a series of students to search a building, paying attention to how much the sights glowed next to each other in comparison to how dark their environment became. While some felt the tritium was superior, others felt that the fiber optic was very similar in visibility when the light was bright enough to identify a target as a threat. The combination fiber optic/tritium sight from Tru-Glo made this comparison a moot point, as the sight glowed brightly no matter what environment the sight was used in, though the fiber optic pipe was smaller than those found on other brands.