The Sterling SAR-87 is a military assault rifle of the late 20th century. The Sterling Assault Rifle (SAR), which included elements from Sterling's earlier Light Automatic Rifle (LAR) design, was jointly engineered by Sterling Armaments Company and

Chartered Industries ST Engineering Land Systems Ltd (STELS), doing business as ST Kinetics, is a strategic business area of ST Engineering and handles land systems and specialty vehicles. In 2000, ST Engineering acquired the Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS ...

of Singapore in the early 1980s as an advanced version of the AR-18 for the export sales. It was also offered to the

British Armed Forces The British Armed Forces, also known as His Majesty's Armed Forces, are the military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies. They also promote the UK's wider interests, s ...

, who declined it because they were already in the process of adopting the

SA80 The SA80 (Small Arms for the 1980s) is a British family of 5.56×45mm NATO service weapons used by the British Army. The L85 Rifle variant has been the standard issue service rifle of the British Armed Forces since 1987, replacing the L1A1 Se ...

bullpup design manufactured by

Royal Ordnance Factories Royal Ordnance Factories (ROFs) was the collective name of the UK government's munitions factories during and after the Second World War. Until privatisation, in 1987, they were the responsibility of the Ministry of Supply, and later the Minist ...

Design

The SAR-87 was a robust weapon based on the well tried AR-18 with the versatility of the

M16 rifle The M16 rifle (officially designated Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16) is a family of military rifles adapted from the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle for the United States military. The original M16 rifle was a 5.56×45mm automatic rifle with a 20-roun ...

. It could also be converted from 5.56×45mm NATO to

9×19mm Parabellum The 9×19mm Parabellum (also known as 9mm Parabellum or 9mm Luger or simply 9mm) is a rimless, tapered firearms cartridge. Originally designed by Austrian firearm designer Georg Luger in 1901, it is widely considered the most popular handgun a ...

by changing the barrel and bolt assembly, to provide a submachine gun for police forces. Sterling Armaments tried to push the rifle, renamed SAR-87, for some more years, but at the end of the 1980s, it was bought out by

British Aerospace British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi ...

Royal Ordnance Royal Ordnance plc was formed on 2 January 1985 as a public corporation, owning the majority of what until then were the remaining United Kingdom government-owned Royal Ordnance Factories (abbreviated ROFs) which manufactured explosives, ammuniti ...

and closed. Fewer than 100 SAR-87 rifles were manufactured.

References

* {{Sterling Armaments Company Ltd 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifles Assault rifles of the United Kingdom Trial and research firearms of the United Kingdom