Cloner Corner: Wilcox ECOS-N Aimpoint CompM Mount

***AUGEE’S CLONER CORNER: Wilcox ECOS-N (Aimpoint CompM) Mount Re-Release***

 

TNVC, in collaboration with Wilcox, Aimpoint USA and Palmetto State Armory

 

TNVC 20th Anniversary Re-Release

 

As one of two Master Distributor Representatives (MDRs) for Wilcox Industries in the U.S. (the other being Own the Night, run by our good friend Larry Clow) we were among the first to be notified that after many years Wilcox would be discontinuing the CompM mount several years ago. The CompM mount, as it was commonly known by then had had a good run—by the time it was discontinued, not only had the SOPMOD program moved several generations… or “Increments” or “Blocks” past the ECOS-N, in favor of more modern optics like both EOTech HWS and “Micro” pattern Aimpoints (such as the T2 and CompM5) while the U.S. Army had transitioned to the CompM4 / M4S for the M68CCO program.

Nevertheless, myself being… somewhat knowledgeable about “cloner” circles within the enthusiast community—that is to say, people who are deeply interested in building replicas of and/or inspired by historical (or in some cases current) military-issued rifles, especially those used by SOF immediately recognized that some could consider this a “problem.” The Wilcox ECOS-N / CompM mount was one of the few “easy” to acquire “clone correct” parts for those interested in building a replica of a MK 18 MOD 0 or M4A1 CQBR. At the time, I sent an impassioned plea to the powers-that-be at Wilcox to consider a final run that would give us the ability to give cloners a bit of a “heads up” that this would be their final chance before the ECOS-N mount was discontinued. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, this never ended up happening back then. However, in the intervening years, several things transpired that culminated in making the current limited re-release of the CompM ECOS-N mount a reality.

 

These are not old stock, used mounts. This is the new production, limited release by Wilcox of the ECOS-N Comp mount wildly known and used on the MK 18 MOD 0 rifle. As some of you may know, the MK 18 MOD 0 was developed by Crane for the U.S. Navy for covert operations and was most commonly seen with the Aimpoint Comp M2 red dot in the Wilcox mount.

 

As we at TNVC reflect on the 20 years that have preceded us and continue to delve into the history and development of various technologies and products and practices and how they might impact the future it is important to remember that the advances and improvements and lessons learned are often not just interesting bits of academic or technical trivia, but rather progress that has in many cases been paid for in blood and by the sacrifices made by our warfighters and armed professionals.

To commemorate this special time and place in history, TNVC has teamed up with Wilcox Industries, Aimpoint USA and Palmetto State Armory (PSA) to provide a piece of history to share for years to come.

Palmetto State Armory will be releasing their Sabre-18 “retro MK 18 MOD 0” with the Wilcox COMP mount and a limited edition, individually serialized Aimpoint PRO optic as a bundle package which includes “TNVC-ECOS-N-XXX” with the iconic TNVC Raven logo. Additionally, PSA will make the complete upper with the optic and mount available for you to mate with your own lower receiver. The Aimpoint PRO optic and mount will be available on TNVC’s website

 

While the announcement for the Palmetto State Armory Sabre-18 “Retro” MOD will announce on Veteran’s Day 2025, they will not be available until November 21st, 2025. Keep a look out on their site HERE

 

So much of the so-called “tactical industry” these days seems to be about “keeping up with the Joneses,” this guy has this, that guy has that, “flexing” the latest widget, talking up this incremental improvement to this widget here, and hey, I’ve been guilty of it as well—the constant drive for innovation and change and upgrading is hard to avoid, and much of what we do at TNVC is based around bringing the “latest and greatest” in Visual Augmentation Systems (VAS, AKA: NV and Thermal and NV and Thermal Accessories) to customers, both government and commercial consumers.

That being said, there’s never not value in maintaining a little bit of perspective and trying to understand “where we’ve been” as a way to understand where things are headed. As TNVC approaches its 20th Anniversary in business, starting in a residential kitchen in Loma Linda, California in the fall of 2005, our staff has seen a lot of change and a lot of evolution in the tools, technology, tactics, and applications of VAS technologies by warfighters, law enforcement, and civilian enthusiasts of all stripes, so naturally, there’s quite a lot of “where we’ve been” to look back on as we prepare enter our third decade in business.

As part of our 20th Anniversary we will be re-visiting, and in some cases re-releasing and re-issuing (often in collaboration with other manufactures and industry partners) some significant products from not only TNVC’s history, but the history of night fighting and low and no-light operations as well as discussing their history and significance to understand where so many of the products, technologies, and capabilities that we’ve come to think of as commonplace or unremarkable, or even in some cases outdated and/or obsolete—which then, ironically, in some cases increases their value to “collectors” on the second-hand to an extent that far exceeds their original value.

The first of these products is the long-awaited re-issue of the Wilcox Industries SOPMOD ECOS-N 30MM Aimpoint CompM mount, teased at SHOT Show in January of 2025 and a “signature” component of the NSWC-Crane M4A1 and MK 18 MOD 0 CQBR (Close Quarters Battle Receiver / Rifle), a weapon system that in many ways has “defined” what a “night fighting rifle” should be in the modern era: a compact, lightweight, short-barreled, sound suppressor capable carbine equipped with a red dot sight, weapon-mount light, and IR aiming laser.

 

 

SOPMOD ECOS-N

 

Introduced in 1995 , shortly before the onset of the Global War on Terror, U.S. Special Operations Command’s (USSOCOM) “Special Operations Peculiar MODification” program for the M4A1 Carbine and managed by Naval Surface Weapons Center – Crane Division (NSWC-Crane) laid much of the ground-work for how to equip warfighters for effective low and no-light operations, to the extent that many casual enthusiasts regularly “misidentify” conventional Army and Marine Corps M4 Carbines as “SOPMOD M4s,” the term has been integrated into video games and movies and pop culture.

While I could (and have…) write volumes about the SOPMOD program itself and its history and its components, I’ll spare you most of it—suffice to say that the SOPMOD program was essentially a “system” of accessories and attachments for the standard issue M4A1 Carbine, designed to increase its capabilities and that of its operators to adapt to a variety of operational conditions, and chief among them, low and no-light operations, and it became one of, if not the first, wide ranging programmatic issue of many now-common types of weapon attachments and accessories, not just IR aiming lasers, but red dot sights, magnified optics such as the Trijicon ACOG (4x DOS – Day Optical Sight), and even weapon mounted lights.

While the first tranche of initial SOPMOD accessories adopted the Trijicon RX01NSN Reflex Sight, since at least the 1980s, many SOF units and personnel had been utilizing red dot sights manufactured by Swedish company, Aimpoint, of which the latest model at the time was CompM, a 30MM electronic red dot collimator gunsight which projected a 3 MOA red dot using a small LED diode and powered by a small 3v 1/3 N battery, and which turned out to be strongly preferred by many end-users over the RX01NSN’s amber fiber optic and tritium illuminated reticle.
The Aimpoint CompM sight was eventually adopted both by the U.S. Army for its conventional forces as the M68 Close Combat Optic (CCO) and by USSOCOM for inclusion in the SOPMOD program and designated the Enhanced Combat Optical Gunsight—Navy (ECOS-N) . Rather than utilize the Aimpoint QRP (Quick Release Picatinny) mount like the M68CCO, NSWC-Crane selected a lightweight, skeletonized mount for the ECOS-N developed by Wilcox Industries in New Hampshire, now most famous for the G24 NVG Helmet Mount, but a hugely influential and significant company in the history of VAS technology, accessory, and integration development, especially just before and in the early days of GWOT.

Unlike the solid but heavy OEM Aimpoint QRP mount, with its prominent quick-release knob sticking out to the side as well as the requirement (generated by the Army) to be compatible with both MIL-STD-1913 Picatinny “flattop” upper receiver rails and the M16A2’s fixed carry handle (utilizing a “gooseneck” attachment that cantilevered the optic over the handguards) necessitating the use of a removeable “half-moon” spacer to achieve proper height (lower one-third) on the top rail of an M4 or M4A1 Carbine, the mount developed by Wilcox was extremely lightweight but extremely rugged, despite seemingly being more lightening cuts than mount, with almost no material through the center of the mount and skeletonized cut-outs on the top ring which was secured with six bolts as opposed to the Aimpoint’s four, and utilizing a simpler and lower profile thumb-screw attachment than the complex torque limited QRP knob design. The Wilcox ECOS-N mount in fact anticipated the overall design principles and cues that inform many of the popular, highly-skeletonized, lightweight red dot mounting systems today.

 

Shane Patton Foundation

 

On a more somber note, the Wilcox CompM ECOS-N mount re-release also coincides with another significant commemoration TNVC will be observing this year, the 20th Anniversary of Operation Red Wings, Afghanistan, 28 June 2005.

One of the reasons that the MK 18 MOD 0 CQBR and SOPMOD ECOS-N is so recognizable, why so many enthusiasts are interested in building replicas of them, is that it was carried by most of the SEALs who participated in Operation Red Wings and thus have been prominently featured in countless team photographs that have been published and re-circulated and even the film Lone Survivor.

Among the servicemembers killed in Operation Red Wings was Navy SEAL Shane Patton, a native of Boulder City, Nevada, whose family still resides there, as well as TNVC’s owner and founder, Victor DiCosola. TNVC has long been a major supporter of the Shane Patton Foundation and this year, the last KIA SEAL from Operation Red Wings will finally have a memorial placed in his hometown after 20 years.

As we at TNVC reflect on the 20 years that have preceded us and continue to delve into the history and development of various technologies and products and practices and how they might impact the future it is important to remember that the advances and improvements and lessons learned are often not just interesting bits of academic or technical trivia, but rather progress that has in many cases been paid for in blood and by the sacrifices made by our warfighters and armed professionals.

 

15 November 1982 – 28 June 2005

Never Forget – Operation Red Wings

 

For more information about the Shane Patton Foundation, click HERE