I don’t build a lot of modern vehicles for myself, but on occasion, I’ve built a few for commission. I discovered a neat way to build modern optics, but I don’t recommend it for everyone. While tearing apart an old computer printer a few years ago (I recycle lots of household electronics for use in model building), I retrieved about 20 cm long X 1mm thick X 3mm wide of prismatic glass from the scanning bar. It has all the reflective qualities of prismatic sight glass. But it has to be cut very carefully with a Dremel diamond cutting tool (while wearing safety glasses and gloves), but once shaped, it looks very convincing, and can be painted either on the front or back with Tamiya smoke, gloss black, gold, copper, silver or clear green, clear red or clear orange to replicate the look you’re after. The effect is striking. But the cutting must be done slowly or you risk fracturing the glass. The printer scanning bars usually come incased in a long plastic tube, backed by a metallic double sided tape. They’re difficult to remove in one piece, but even a 2 cm chunk will give you 2-3 optic sight panels. Additionally, I’ve been using the optic scanners found in CD drives for circular telescopic sights. These are usually tiny and made of hard clear optical plastic (the same as eyeglasses are made from), but are easier to shape than the scanning bars (which are glass). Since they are clear, they do need a tint on the backside. So, before throwing out that old printer, computer or CD player, scavenge and “recycle” it for useable stuff first.
The only other technique I’ve used is much simpler— AFV club makes a selection of “stick-on” “optic glass” appliqués for their line of Stryker vehicles which are sold separately. These can be cut to just about any shape you need and tinted accordingly. They’re not quite as good as true optical glass, but they still look the part.
VR, Russ
Un-coated optics will be just plain Glass, certain optics containing Laser's will have clear glass incorporating A Mirror. Laser's detectors will look like just A mirror like aperture ! Panoramic sites which can be rather large will most often show the coating more color in contrast, The Abrams with its Red coating on its optic's were A rather pain to try and look accurate, Now You can obtain stickers for certain vehicles in 1/35. Some Modeler's will paint there optics Tamiya Clear Blue on the inside during construction; Clear Green thinned works well also. 
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