Springfield Armory's VIS: Best New Red-Dot Mounting System?

Red dots have grown increasingly common on pistols in recent years. Today, most semiauto handguns offer mounting solutions for attaching reflex sights. But “solutions” does not imply that the process is always simple. On the contrary, plates to slides and plates to optics, finding the right screw length with the right pattern, and making certain the optic you have will even work with your firearm has become a tangled web. As someone who evaluates handguns on a regular basis, I have jars and jars of unidentified mounting screws and unlabeled optic plates floating around my office. To their credit, most firearm manufacturers try to make optic mounting as simple and easy for buyers as possible despite a plethora of optics and footprints. Micro-compact reflex sights are probably the simplest to mount because the Shield RMSc footprint has become almost universal. It’s a different story with full-sized optics. Some firearms manufacturers offer multiple plates with their guns, and others offer a free plate that matches your optic with the purchase of the gun. But Springfield has finally solved the problem with the release of their VIS system. VIS stands for Variable Interface System, and though the concept seems simple enough — design a gun that can accommodate most any optic without added plates — no one has developed a system that works as well as the VIS.

The slide is cut for optics, with several holes machined into the slide cut. Some of these holes accommodate mounting screws while others hold locking pins that serve as an interface between the gun and cutouts in the optic base. By arranging these pins and using the provided screws, you can mount over 30 popular red dots. In doing so, it eliminates much of the hassle involved with mounting optics on a pistol. Springfield’s press release regarding the VIS states that the system, “employs patent-pending self-locking pins to complete the most versatile optics mounting system on the market. The pins can be positioned to fit the footprints of a wide range of popular optics, allowing for an unparalleled direct-mount fit between the pistol’s slide and optic. Additionally, as the mounting screws are torqued to spec, the pins exert lateral pressure on the optic’s interior mounting surface to eliminate left/right movement.”

Springfield has released a video that explains the self-locking nature of the pins in detail, but the overall thrust of the concept is this: when the self-locking pins are inserted, they are designed so that they can tilt slightly inward. When the optic is placed onto the pins, the downward pressure of the optics causes the pins to tilt and lock in position on the medial surfaces of the corresponding cutout in the optics. In doing so, the pins place even left-right pressure on the optic and help it maintain a very precise zero, a better system than more loose-fitting pins that keep the optic on the firearm but allow enough lateral shift to open group sizes.

“The Variable Interface System [VIS] represents a revolutionary solution to mounting optics on handguns,” said Mike Humphries, media relations manager for Springfield Armory. “I like to think of it as being a ‘universal key’ to this usually extremely complicated subject.” The VIS system debuted on Springfield’s outstanding new full-sized Echelon series striker-fired pistol. While it’s a great choice for competition shooters and the consumer market, the Echelon with VIS was undoubtedly built with law-enforcement (LE) professionals in mind. Here, Springfield offered a modular pistol with substantial 20-round capacity with the included magazine that almost certainly works with the optics that departments currently run. That eliminates a lot of headache and allows for LE professionals to mount whichever optic on their duty weapon that they’d like. If they opt to change red dots, they don’t need to special order plates or screws, either. It’s a sensible way to add versatility to duty weapons, and I suspect that it will draw many agencies to Springfield’s door.

Mounting and Field Testing

The absence of a plate means the optic sits as low as possible on the slide, allowing standard height sights to cowitness with optics that have high deck heights, eliminating the need to swap irons for suppressor-height sights. I also believe that lower optics are faster and easier to use. More space between the dot and the top of the pistol creates a disconnect. I shoot faster with sights mounted low on the gun just as I do with riflescopes that don’t require me to break my cheekweld. Most shooters don’t notice, but there is a minor amount of left-right play inherent to most red-dot optics on pistols. Some have very little, but the notion that extensions on a polymer plate will match up perfectly with machined aluminum optic bases from two different manufacturers is a stretch. Will they match closely? Yes, and I doubt that most shooters will ever notice. But the VIS system mounts perfectly because of the locking design, and that makes your handgun more precise.

The setup is also tough. Springfield suggests the proper screw tension so that you know the optic will be held in place according to the manufacturer specifications, and you needn’t worry about damaging the gun or the screws because they are threaded the same. After 300 rounds, I couldn’t tell that the Echelon had loosened at all, and there was no point of impact shift. I like the Trijicon RMR that was provided and would keep it on that gun, but if I decided to run another brand, I could easily do so thanks to the VIS system. Swapping optics would be simple and I wouldn’t have to worry about the red dot fitting securely. I also believe that the VIS setup is faster because of the low mount. The Echelon came with a holster, and I could draw the gun and get on target quickly without the need to train my body and brain to the optic. I simply pulled the firearm, mounted as though I were using irons, and the optic window and dot were clearly visible. Sometimes new firearm products or features aren’t really that innovative. The Variable Optic System from Springfield, however, is an evolutionary step forward in optic mounting. You can expect that other companies will derive similar concepts, because no one wants to be left behind.

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