The ACRO footprint

The sections below cover what the tables on this page cannot: how to tell an ACRO mount from the pattern it is most often confused with, what this dataset does and does not publish about its geometry, which plate to ask for, and what an ACRO plate is actually worth in optics. For the wider argument about a pattern with no factory cuts anywhere, see the ACRO footprint guide, which this page does not repeat.

How to identify an ACRO mount without a caliper

Four checks, and the first one settles it. ACRO is the easiest pattern on this site to identify by eye, because it is the only one you identify by the absence of something.

1. Turn the optic over and look for screw holes. There are none. An ACRO body has no top-down mounting holes at all. Every screw-through pattern in this dataset, RMR, RMSc, DeltaPoint Pro, Docter, Holosun K, the full size Holosun EPS and C-More STS, puts two holes through the base of the optic and drives them down into the slide or the plate. ACRO does not have them, which is why no amount of comparing hole spacing will get you anywhere (optics-trade.eu).
2. Find the single cross-bolt on the side of the body. Instead of pulling down, an ACRO clamps sideways: one bolt driven in from the flank pulls the body onto a dovetail-style groove on the mount. That is the one fastener on the optic, and it is the figure this page publishes as a screw count of 1. Read it as a clamp bolt, not as a screw you drive from above.
3. Look for one perpendicular recoil stopper, not a ring of lugs. An ACRO body carries a single stopper that drops into a matching slot on the mount and takes the rearward load. That is the recoil lug count of 1 in the specifications above. Patterns you might be comparing it against publish 2 (RMR, Holosun K) or 4 (RMSc, DeltaPoint Pro, Docter).
4. Read the plate listing, not the kit box. Because nothing is milled for ACRO, your pistol never tells you whether ACRO is available; the plate does. The nine systems recorded here all sell ACRO as one plate out of several, and the listings name the pattern in the title. Beretta’s 90-Series plate kit listing is explicit about which footprint it is (beretta.com), and so is Walther’s Gen 2 plate (waltherarms.com).

The model-name rule, which is where most of the real confusion sits. An optic with ACRO in its name uses this pattern, and an Aimpoint without ACRO in its name probably does not. The next section is entirely about product lines that change footprint partway through.

Pattern and dimensions

What this dataset publishes for ACRO today:

Property	Value	Source
Mounting style	Dovetail clamp	dataset
Fasteners on the optic body	1 cross-bolt, entering from the side	dataset
Top-down mounting screws	0	dataset
Recoil features	1 perpendicular stopper into a slot on the mount	dataset
Footprint family	Aimpoint ACRO	dataset
Optic pages on this pattern	5, covering 5 SKUs from 3 brands	dataset
Pistols with a factory cut for it	0 of 196	dataset
Pistols reaching it through a plate	80 of 196, over 9 plate systems	dataset

ACRO publishes the only screw count of 1 anywhere in this dataset. Ten of the 24 footprint records publish 2, the Holosun 509T publishes a sourced 0, and twelve plate systems publish nothing at all. The lone 1 is a real measurement and it is the pattern’s signature, as long as you read it as the clamp bolt it is. The chip at the top of this page says “Screw count: 1” because that is the field name the whole site uses; on this one pattern the field is counting a bolt that enters from the flank.

Clamp jaw width, groove depth, bolt thread, stopper dimensions and window size are not published here, for ACRO or for any other pattern on this site. No dimensioned Aimpoint drawing has been read into the dataset. The three sources recorded against this footprint are the Optics Trade write-up of the mounting standard, the OpticsPlanet footprint guide and a Gun Zone explainer (optics-trade.eu, opticsplanet.com, thegunzone.com), and the record’s own note says the mounting mechanism was checked against Aimpoint documentation through the first of those. None of the three carries a drawing. Until one does, the rule on this site is to print a null rather than a guess, so use the torque figure and the bolt that ship with your optic.

One qualitative dimension claim is worth keeping because it is the most common false start: ACRO resembles a short Picatinny section and is not interchangeable with one. The groove geometry and the stopper slot are specific to the standard, which is why a rail-like appearance on a plate is not evidence that an ACRO will clamp to it.

Look-alikes that will not interchange

ACRO against the Holosun 509T, the only other clamp pattern here. This is the pair that matters. Both are enclosed-emitter patterns, both clamp, and both look nothing like the screw-through crowd. The 509T record states the split plainly: a clamp-and-rail interface with zero screws on the optic body, similar in concept to ACRO, with different dimensions and explicitly not cross-compatible (optics-trade.eu, holosun.com). So the screw count is the field that separates them: 0 on the 509T, 1 here. Their reach is not comparable at all. The 509T pattern has 2 optic pages and is reached by no pistol in this dataset, directly or through a plate; ACRO has 5 pages and 80 pistols. If you want a sealed emitter and you own a plate-system pistol, ACRO is the clamp pattern that is actually available to you.

ACRO against the screw-through patterns. RMR (33 optics), RMSc (30), DeltaPoint Pro (15), Docter (6), Holosun K (5) and C-More STS (1) all mount by driving screws down through the optic. Nothing about hole spacing applies to ACRO, and no shim, longer screw or filed lug converts between them. On a plate-system pistol you do not convert: you change plates.

ACRO against a plate system. Glock MOS, S&W M&P CORE, FN 509 and the other 12 plate systems here are not footprints. A plate drops into the slide and its top face carries a footprint, which is why this site keeps 24 footprint pages of which 15 are plate systems. MOS is a plate system, not a footprint, and the plate you fit decides which optics mount.

MOS in a pistol’s name is not the MOS plate system. Two Glocks here are named MOS and reach no ACRO plate at all: the 43X MOS and the 48 MOS. Both are recorded as accepting RMSc on the slide, like any other slim Glock, and both reach 30 optic pages rather than the 84 a 19 Gen5 MOS reaches. If your Glock is a slimline, the MOS badge is about a factory cut, not about the multi-plate kit, and ACRO is not on the menu.

Three product lines that change footprint partway through

Footprint mistakes on this pattern are mostly brand mistakes. Three lines in this dataset switch mounting standard without switching product name, and all three are documented on the makers’ own pages.

Aimpoint ACRO against Aimpoint COA. All three Aimpoint pages here are ACRO. The COA is not: Aimpoint’s page for it states that the slide or platform must have an A-CUT interface (aimpoint.us). A-CUT is not in this dataset’s footprint vocabulary, no pistol page records it, and so the COA produces no optic page here. Treat an Aimpoint box as telling you the brand and nothing about the mount.

Steiner MPS against Steiner MPS-C. The MPS is an ACRO optic, recorded on the pattern’s cross-compatibility with the Steiner variant (steiner-optics.com). The MPS-C is an RMSc optic on Steiner’s own wording for that model, which describes an RMSc footprint engineered for slimline and subcompact pistols (steiner-optics.com). The consequence is a 106-page swing in what fits: the MPS reaches 80 pistols, the MPS-C reaches 186.

Burris FastFire, which spans three patterns. The FastFire E is the ACRO model, and Burris says so in the mounting line on its page (burrisoptics.com). The FastFire C is RMSc (burrisoptics.com) and reaches 186 pistols. The FastFire 3 and FastFire 4 are filed under Docter and reach 55. One line, three mounting standards, and the only one of the four that will clamp to your ACRO plate is the E.

How a plate gets you to ACRO

The plates section above lists the 9 systems and their pistol counts. What it cannot tell you is the shape of those kits, which is the part that decides what you buy.

Every ACRO plate is sold inside a kit that also offers RMR, RMSc and DeltaPoint Pro. There is no plate system here whose only interesting plate is the ACRO one, which means nobody has to pick a platform in order to get ACRO: the pattern is always an addition to a kit that already carries the three largest optic lists on the site. It also means the opposite risk is the real one, because a kit that fits your slide proves nothing about the plate in your hand.

The nine break into exactly two kit shapes:

• Five systems carry ACRO, DeltaPoint Pro, RMR and RMSc, and no Docter plate: Glock MOS at 16 pistols, S&W M&P CORE at 14, FN 509 at 12, CZ P-10 OR at 7 and HK VP9 OR at 6. That is 55 of the 80 pistols.
• Four systems add a Docter plate on top of the same four: Beretta APX A1 at 10 pistols, Walther PDP 2.0 at 10, Springfield Echelon VIS at 4 and Walther PDP 1.0 at 1. That is the other 25.

The sourcing behind those rows is worth knowing, because it is uneven. The Beretta and both Walther ACRO plates trace to the makers’ own listings (beretta.com, waltherarms.com, optics-spot.com), the Springfield Echelon row to Springfield’s own pin-set listing (store.springfield-armory.com), and the S&W, FN, CZ and HK rows to C&H Precision’s per-pistol compatibility pages (chpws.com, chpws.com, chpws.com, chpws.com). The largest path of the nine, Glock MOS at 16 pistols, is the weakest sourced: it rests on a retailer footprint guide rather than a Glock document (opticsplanet.com). It is also the path most likely to be right, since MOS kits are the most documented plate kits in the market, but a Glock parts listing would be better evidence and this dataset does not have one.

ACRO and C-More STS never appear in the same kit. Across all 15 plate systems, the 9 that present ACRO present no C-More STS plate, and the 4 that present C-More STS present no ACRO plate: SIG P320 X-series at 16 pistols, Canik METE at 7, Taurus TORO at 4 and Ruger factory optic plate at 1, which is the full 28 pistols C-More STS reaches. The remaining two systems, Springfield XD OSP and Springfield AOS, present neither. Nine plus four plus two is 15. The split is not a rule anyone wrote down; it is what the plate catalogues happen to carry, and it means the two most unusual patterns on this site are also the two you can never get from the same kit.

What an ACRO plate is worth, in optics

Here is the figure to take away: an ACRO path means at least 83 of the 100 optic pages on this site, and the floor is arithmetic rather than an estimate. Because every ACRO kit also carries RMR, RMSc and DeltaPoint Pro plates, and because those four optic lists do not overlap by a single page, 33 plus 30 plus 15 plus 5 lands on exactly 83. The tiers above it come from two additions:

• 83 optics, 39 pistols. The four-plate kits with no direct-fit optic: S&W M&P CORE, FN 509, CZ P-10 OR and HK VP9 OR.
• 84 optics, 16 pistols. Glock MOS, which is the same four plates plus the one optic recorded as mounting to a MOS slide without a plate.
• 89 optics, 15 pistols. The Docter-carrying kits: the 10 Beretta models, the 4 Echelon models and the one PDP Full Size on the Gen 1 plate. The extra 6 are the Docter list.
• 90 optics, 10 pistols. The Walther PDP Gen 2 models, which add one optic built for the cut on top of the 89. Those 10 are the highest-reaching pistols in the dataset.

The inverse is where this gets useful as a shopping rule rather than a trivia line. 26 of the 116 pistols with no ACRO path still clear 83 optics, and 24 of those 26 sit at exactly 85: the 16 SIG P320 X-series models, the 7 Canik METE and TP9 models and the Ruger-57, all reaching more optic pages than a 509 Tactical or a CORE does, and not one of them able to mount a single Aimpoint. So “how many optics fit” and “does the optic I want fit” are different questions on this pattern, and the count will mislead you if you only read one of them. The two outliers are the Springfield XD-M Elite OSP at 89 and the 1911 DS Prodigy at 84.

Where ACRO cannot go

116 of the 196 pistols have no recorded ACRO path, and the shape of that 116 is more useful than its size. 22 of the 30 pistol brands in this dataset reach ACRO on nothing they sell, covering 97 pistols. Sig Sauer is the largest at 29 pistols, then Canik at 15, Taurus at 10, Tisas, SAR USA and Girsan at 5 each, Ruger at 4, and the rest in ones and twos. The other 19 come from brands that do reach ACRO on some models and not others, and those are the ones worth checking model by model: Springfield Armory reaches it on 4 of 11, Smith & Wesson on 14 of 21, Glock on 16 of 18, FN America on 12 of 14, Heckler & Koch on 6 of 7.

Three brands are the opposite case, with every pistol in the dataset reaching ACRO: Beretta (10 of 10), Walther (11 of 11) and CZ-USA (7 of 7). All three sell only plate-system pistols here, which is the whole explanation. A brand’s ACRO coverage on this site is a statement about how many of its slides are milled for a micro pattern instead of pocketed for a plate, not a statement about the brand’s optics policy.

The 19 near-misses divide into two reasons, and the reason changes what you can do about it. Most are milled for RMSc and have no plate pocket at all: the 43X MOS and 48 MOS, the M&P Shield Plus OR, the Hellcat family, the CSX, the HK CC9. For those, ACRO is not a plate away; the slide has no plate. The rest are milled for a different pattern that happens not to be ACRO, like the FN Reflex MRD and Reflex XL MRD, both recorded as Holosun K plus RMSc slides reaching 35 optics.

How to choose an ACRO optic

Compatibility is not the tiebreaker here, and that is unusual enough to say plainly. All 5 ACRO pages fit exactly the same 80 pistols, so once you own an ACRO plate, every optic on this pattern is available to you and the choice is about everything except mounting. Exactly 5 of the 100 optic pages on this site land on a fit count of 80, and they are these five, which makes 80 an ACRO fingerprint when you are reading an optic page and wondering what pattern it is on.

What the dataset can tell you about the five:

• Three brands, five SKUs, no product families. Aimpoint’s ACRO P-1, ACRO P-2 and ACRO C-2, the Steiner MPS and the Burris FastFire E, each one page and one SKU; the list above links all five. Compare that to RMR, where 33 pages cover 47 SKUs from 7 brands: this is a small, tidy bench.
• All 5 are enclosed emitters, out of 27 enclosed pages site-wide. Three patterns here have no open-emitter member at all, and the other two are the Holosun 509T (2 pages) and the full size Holosun EPS (1 page), neither of which any pistol in this dataset can reach. ACRO is the only all-enclosed pattern that is reachable at all, which is the real reason it matters out of proportion to a five-optic list.
• No prices or availability are published on this page, and none should be inferred from the list order. The offers shown beside each optic come from a retailer feed and move on their own; the dataset makes no claim about street price, stock or which model is better.

So the order of operations is: confirm your pistol is one of the 80 in the plates section above, buy that system’s ACRO plate by part number, then pick among the five on reticle, window size, battery access and price. There is no compatibility question left to answer at that last step, and there is no compatibility reason to prefer any of the five.

What this dataset records for ACRO, and what it owes

Read this before trusting any count on this page, including ours.

2 of the 5 ACRO optic pages are flagged verified, part of 48 of the 100 optic pages site-wide. A verified flag means the maker’s own page, or two independent pages, was read and the sentence stating the footprint is recorded against the row. The two are the Aimpoint ACRO P-2, verified against Aimpoint’s page for that exact model, and the Burris FastFire E, verified against the Burris page that names the ACRO footprint in its mounting line. Steiner MPS is sourced research rather than verified.

The three Aimpoint pages share one source URL between them. The ACRO P-1 and ACRO C-2 rows both cite Aimpoint’s ACRO P-2 product page, which does not describe either model, and both rows are left unverified for exactly that reason. The pattern claim for them comes from a family rule, not from a page about the model. Each of those two is owed its own Aimpoint product URL, and the caveat is recorded on the rows rather than hidden.

No dimensioned source exists here for the clamp geometry. See the pattern table above: the mechanism is sourced, the measurements are not published.

One cross-compatible optic named by the footprint record has no page here. The record describes ACRO as cross-compatible with the Steiner MPS, which does have a page, and the Vector Optics Frenzy Plus, which does not. No fit is claimed for the Frenzy Plus anywhere on this site, and none should be read into the footprint description.

0 of 196 pistols cut for ACRO is a fact about the pattern, not a gap. A clamp interface cannot be milled into a slide; it lives on the mount. Where you should be suspicious of a zero on this site is the plate systems, twelve of which publish no screw count because none was ever recorded, which is a very different thing from a measured zero.

Where to go next

The footprints index compares all 24 patterns and plate systems side by side, including the 9 true footprints and the 15 plate systems. The ACRO footprint guide carries the long argument about a pattern with no factory cuts. If you landed here while working out what your own pistol takes, the plate systems most likely to be yours are Glock MOS, S&W M&P CORE, FN 509 and Walther PDP 2.0, and the pistols those pages are built around include the Glock 19 Gen5 MOS, the M&P9 M2.0 C.O.R.E., the FN 509 Tactical, the Beretta 92XI, the CZ P-10 C OR, the HK VP9 OR, the Springfield Echelon and the Walther PDP Gen 2.