Armalite AR-18: The Widowmaker

Armalite AR-18: The Widowmaker

The AR-18 is a cheap and sleazy rifle. Intended as a low-cost alternative weapon for countries that could not afford the latest Western rifles, it never achieved commercial success, but it has won a nasty reputation as a terrorist weapon, particularly in the hands of the Provisional IRA. Despite its pressed steel receiver and spot welds, it is a highly effective 5.56-mm rifle. The gun can be broken down for concealment without ruining the zeroing, so it can be pulled out of hiding and used immediately and accurately.

The AR-18 was another product of the tangled history of the Armalite company and its various partners. The full story of their employment of Eugene Stoner as designer, and the series of rifles and shotguns that they developed betwen 1954 and 1964, would fill many pages and be entirely confusing. The most famous gun to appear from this partnership was, of course, the AR-15, which became the M16 rifle. But there are an awful lot of people who will tell you that the Armalite AR-18 was an even better weapon, and they still dream of the day somebody will put it into mass production.

In fact, the AR-18 was not a Stoner design, although it uses ideas from most of the earlier Armalite rifles. After the AR-15 had been accepted into military service and Armalite had split away from the Fairchild Engine & Aircraft Corporation, Stoner left to become a consultant to Colt. In 1959 Armalite decided that there was still a demand for a 7.62-mm rifle and they developed the AR-16, based on a much earlier design known as the AR-10.

This had failed to make much of an impression, largely due to the problems with manufacturers. The object was to make a rifle that was cheap and easy to manufacture, so that it could be licensed to countries that did not have advanced industrial technology. No expensive machine tools were required. The AR-16 was simple enough to be made on lathes and milling machines.

Lightening the load

By the time the wrinkles were out of the AR-16, it was obvious that the 7.62-mm cartridge would be superseded by the emerging 5.56-mm round, and in 1963 the AR-16 was shelved in favor of a new model, the AR-18. (The AR-17, if you're interested, was a lightweight automatic shotgun that had a very brief career.) The Ar-18 was basically the AR-16 scaled-down for the smaller cartridge, so it was easy to manufacture some prototypes and send 10 of them for testing to the US Army, which at that time was involved in a programme known as SAWS (Squard Automatic Weapon System).

Tests took place in 1964 and the US Army reported that the rifle had military potential, although it didn't fit its SAWS requirement. Armalite then made a few more rifles and began demonstrating them around the world, particularly in countries that might be attracted by the inexpensive manufacturing aspect of the design.

Eventually Armalite licensed production to the Howa Machinery Company of Shinkawacho, Japan, in 1967, and they began producing the military AR-18 and the civilian (semi-automatic only) AR-180 version. This didn't last long, as the Japanese government, worried by the nearness of the Vietnam War and not wishing to get involved in any way, soon forbade any traffic in arms with 'belligerent countries'. Since the USA, the prime market, was technically a belligerent in Vietnam, that was that. Howa stopped manufacture and the AR-18 went into limbo.

In 1975 it reappeared when the Sterling Armaments Company of Dagenham, famous for the Sterling submachinegun, took out a manufacturing license and began making AR-18s and AR-180s. But this venture failed to prosper, and in 1983 Sterling sold the tooling to an unidentified foreign country. Since then nothing more has been heard of the AR-18.

So if it was as good as the enthusiasts say, why didn't it sell like hot cakes? Simple economics. Most of the countries who wanted a 5.56-mm rifle and who might have been attracted by the simple manufacture of the AR-18 were even more impressed by the price quoted for the AR-15. Colt now had that rifle in mass production and was turning them out by the tens of thousands. If the price of a complete AR-15 was a little difficult for a country to meet, it was possible to construct an assembly plant and buy the difficult bits from Colt, add a few simple things like screws, and assemble them in the country at an even lower price.

Either of these prospects was more attractive than the thought of having to build factories, buy tools and train a workforce, no matter how simple the rifle might be. And that is why you see plenty of AR-15s and M16s but very few AR-18s of AR-180s.

How it Works

The AR-18 is a gas-operated weapon, using a rotating bolt very similar to that used on the M16. The principle difference is that the AR-18 uses a conventional gas piston arrangement, though it has a slight difference: the 'cylinder' is a hollow spigot, and the 'piston' wraps around it and is blown backwards, off the spigot, by the gas pressure. The piston is a short-stroke design, which gives the bolt carrier a quick blow, sufficient to start it moving backwards.

The carrier moves back on two steel rods, compressing two return springs, and as it moves, so a cam track rotates the bolt and unlocks it. The carrier and bolt then go back, extracting the spent case, and the springs drive the assembly back again to chamber a fresh round. The hammer is cocked during the bolt carrier movement, so that as soon as the carrier completes its forward stroke the bolt is locked and the rifle is ready to fire again.

The receiver is of pressed streel, welded together, and most of the cosnturction is similar -- pressings, pinnings, spot welds. All the furniture is plastic, but for all that the rifle feels solid and reliable, and certianly shoots well enough. The standard barrl is 464mm (18 in) long, and the rifle is 940mm (37in) long with folding butt extended; with the butt folded the length is 736mm (29in). The standard magazine holds 20 rounds, though 30-and 40-round magazines were developed. The standard rear sight is a two-position flip aperture, for 200 and 400 M (656 aand 1,312 ft), although the rear sight on civilian AR-180s actually has an adjustable aperture. There was also a compact 3x telescope sight made for the rifle, though few were sold.

A short version, the AR-18S, was developed by Armalite and a few were made by Sterling, though it does not appear to have been made in any quantity. This used the same basic mechanism but had a 257-mm barrel and a length of 765mm (30in) with the butt extended. The handguard was fitted with a forward pistol grip so that the rifle could be held like a submachine gun and, like the parent rifle, it had a full-auto rate of fire of 800 rounds per minute. From what few accounts there are, the AR-18s appears to have been remarkably accurate for such a short-barrelled weapon, and it had a respectable punch.

Added:  Saturday, February 11, 2006
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Related web link:  Wikipedia Entry on the AR-18
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