SAR 80 on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
The Singapore Assault Rifle 80 (SAR 80) is an indigenously built, conventional assault rifle from
*: Seen in the hands of Central African
Modern Firearms
{{DEFAULTSORT:SAR-80 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifles Assault rifles of Singapore
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
.
History and development
In the late 1960s, theSingapore Armed Forces
The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) are the military services of the Republic of Singapore, responsible for protecting and defending the security interests and the sovereignty of the country. A military component of the Ministry of Defence (MINDE ...
(SAF) adopted the AR-15
An AR-15-style rifle is any lightweight semi-automatic rifle based on the Colt AR-15 design. The original ArmaLite AR-15 is a scaled-down derivative of Eugene Stoner's ArmaLite AR-10 design. The then Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation d ...
as their main service rifle. Due to difficulties in obtaining the rifles from the United States, the Singaporean government purchased a license to domestically manufacture 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 ...
, which was then designated the M16S1. However, the domestic rifle requirements were not sufficient to allow Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS, now Singapore Technologies Kinetics
ST Engineering Land Systems Ltd (STELS), Trade name, 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 Sin ...
) to economically maintain operations at its rifle factory. Export sales of the M16S1 were not a viable option. Due to the requirements of the license agreement, CIS had to request permission from Colt and the US State Department to allow any export sale, which they rarely granted.
In the early 1970s, Sterling Armaments Company
The Sterling Engineering Company Ltd was an arms manufacturer based in Dagenham, famous for manufacturing the L2A3 (the 'Sterling submachine gun'), ArmaLite AR-18 and Sterling SAR-87 assault rifles and parts of Jaguar cars. The company went bankrup ...
engineers had developed their own 5.56 mm rifle design, the Light Automatic Rifle (LAR), but this had been shelved when Sterling acquired a manufacturing licence for the US-designed Armalite AR-18 assault rifle. While Sterling could not legally sublicense the AR-18, their AR-18 derived Sterling Assault Rifle (SAR) was available. This was based on a refined version of the Light Automatic Rifle, fitted with an AR-18 trigger group. Sterling licensed the SAR design to CIS, who put it into production as the SAR 80.
The successor to this weapon is the SR-88.
Users
*: Seen in the hands of Central African Gendarmerie
Wrong info! -->
A gendarmerie () is a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population. The term ''gendarme'' () is derived from the medieval French expression ', which translates to " men-at-arms" (literally, ...
.
*: Croatian Army.
*: Papua New Guinea Defence Force.
*: Slovenian Army.
*: Somalia received SAR 80s during the 1980s. Most seen in the Middle East, heavily modified by various forces fighting in the region.
*
*
* Some used by Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (french: Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, FDLR) is an armed rebel group active in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. As an ethnic Hutu group opposed to the ethnic Tuts ...
in Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
See also
* SA80 * Leader Dynamics Series T2 MK5 * Heckler & Koch G36 *List of assault rifles
An assault rifle is a rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge, a detachable magazine, and can switch between semi-automatic/fully automatic fire. Assault rifles are currently the standard service rifles in most modern armies. Some rifles listed ...
References
External links
Modern Firearms
{{DEFAULTSORT:SAR-80 5.56×45mm NATO assault rifles Assault rifles of Singapore