SAR 80


The SAR 80 is an assault rifle from Singapore.

History

In the late 1960s, the Singapore Armed Forces adopted the AR-15 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, which was then designated the M16S1. It was introduced in 1967. Despite this restriction, around 10,000 M16S1s were reportedly sold to Manila without meeting approval from Washington DC. Other sales were made to Thailand, which was allowed to proceed with reluctance from DC due to pressure from Thai officials due to concerns on whether Bangkok can assure Washington DC that those M16s won't be sold to another country without permission.
The domestic rifle requirements were not sufficient to allow Chartered Industries of Singapore 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. The only time Singapore received permissions is for export sales to Thailand in 1972.

Development

In the early 1970s, Sterling Armaments Company engineers had developed their own 5.56 mm rifle design, the Light Automatic Rifle, 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 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.

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