SAR-80: the American-Britannic of the Far East

Make no mistake, the SAR-80 is indeed a clone of the Armalite AR-18 assault rifleAn assault rifle is a weapon defined by the use of an "inter... More designed by Arthur Miler and based on the AR-16 (originally in 7.62×51 mm) that was designed by Eugen Stoner, the legendary father of the AR-15. Less revolutionary than the AR-15 in its time, the AR-18 is built around stamped sheet metal frames. It is gas-operated using a short stroke gas piston (very similar to the widespread version from the SVT-38 and SVT-40) and by direct impingement as on the AR-15.

The AR-18 did not meet the expected success in the United States: claiming to replace a weapon already in service with hundreds of thousands of samples in the armed forces and largely put forward by “soft power” was indeed as difficult challenge! However, this weapon with a more traditional and rustic design was a relative success in the UK. From 1979 to 1985, it was manufactured under license by Sterling both for the civil (called AR-180 semi-automatic, for the United States in particular) and administrative markets. Its mechanisms also served as the basis for the development of the British bullpup SA-80 (or L85A1).

Costa Mesa to Singapore, via Sterling

In 1976, Frank Waters, working at Sterling Armament Company, designed a weapon very strongly inspired by the AR-18: the Sterling Assault RifleAn assault rifle is a weapon defined by the use of an "inter... More 80 or SAR-80. This weapon was designed for the needs of the Singaporean arms industry, grouped in the company “Chartered Industries of Singapore” or CIS. The purpose of this weapon design was to provide a simple, reliable and cheap weapon to produce.

After a pre-series production in 1978, the CIS company produced this weapon from 1980 mainly for export. In fact, although the weapon was tested and validated in 1984 by the Singapore Armed Forces, “few” copies would be purchased (some sources still mentioned the quantity of 20,000 weapons). The Singapore army preferred to replace its service weapons with the successor to the SAR-80, the SR-88a model (presented in another article) strongly inspired by SAR-80, then by the SAR-21 bullpup and finally by the very modern BR-18.

The weapon enjoyed some export success, having been used in continental Europe by Croatia and Slovenia during their wars of independence in the early 1990s which saw the fragmentation of Yugoslavia. It is also found “marginally” in Somalia, Central Africa (Rwanda, DRC… weapons travel a lot), as well as to Sri Lanka. It is also interesting to note that if the presence of these weapons is attested in all these countries, images of fighters equipped with SAR-80 are rather rare. (Pic. 5)

Our sample, made available to us by the ESISTOIRE gunshop near Strasbourg, is probably from stocks in the Balkans and most probably from Slovenia.

The production numbers of these weapons are not known at our level, but there is no doubt that we can speak at least of tens of thousands of weapons…