The Sterling SAR-87 was a military assault rifle of the late Twentieth 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 of Singapore in the early 1980s as an advanced version of the AR-18 for the export sales. It was also introduced to the British Armed Forces, who refused it because they were already in the process of adopting the SA80 manufactured by Royal Ordnance Factories. The SAR-87 was a robust weapon based on the well tried AR-18 with the versatility of the M16 rifle. It could also be converted from 5.56x45mm to 9x19mm Parabellum by changing the barrel and bolt assembly, to provide a submachine gun for Police forces. Once again, 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/Royal Ordnance and closed. Less than 100 SAR-87 rifles were manufactured.
References[]
Military Small Arms of the 20th Century, 4th Edition, by Ian V. Hogg and John Weeks, ISBN 0-910676-28-3,Ca 1981
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