The AR-18 entered the initial design phase in 1963 and was produced from 1969 to 1985, with 1,171 total specimens built.
Aahh, the oh-so-controversial AR-15, the semiauto-only civilian market version of the U.S. Armed Forces’ M16 rifle. Everybody knows the “AR” stands for “Assault Rifle,” right?
In the immortal words of ESPN College GameDay’s Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!” Those first two letters actually stand for “ArmaLite Rifle,” named after the company that designed it, the iconic 1950s firearm (the M16 was officially adopted by the U.S. Air Force in 1963, with the U.S. Army following suit in 1965).
However, long before the AR-15 was vilified by American politicians, another ArmaLite rifle was gaining notoriety “across the pond” in the early 1970s, viewed as either a terrorist’s weapon or a freedom fighter’s tool (depending on your perspective): the 5.56x45mm AR-180.
AR-18 Initial History and Specifications
The AR-18 entered the initial design phase in 1963 and was produced from 1969 to 1985, with 1,171 total specimens built. According to The National Interest‘s Peter Suciu:
“After [the late Eugene] Stoner departed ArmaLite, George Sullivan took the lead on a new firearm—the AR-18. It was developed as a low-budget AR-15, and utilized stamped components … There were also a number of similarities as well as differences with the AR-15 and the AR-18/AR-180. Among those was that the AR-18 included an operation handle attached to the bolt carrier that traveled with the carrier during operation. Additionally, the stock and fore-end of the AR-18/180 was a bit lighter than the AR-15/M16; while the buttstock was also hinged at the rear of the receiver assembly in an effort to ease portability in confined spaces. The barrel length of the AR-18 was also two inches short at eighteen inches, which resulted in a slightly more compact rifle compared to the AR-15/M-16.”
Besides the aforementioned barrel length, the rifle had the following tech specs (courtesy of Christopher R. Bartocci of Small Arms Review):
- Empty Weight: 6.7 lbs.
- Weight w/ Scope: 7.7 lbs.
- Overall Length: 38 inches with stock extended; 28.75 inches with stock folded
- Cyclic Rate of Fire: 750 rounds per minute (official ArmaLite stats) or 900 rounds per minute (military test figures)
- Magazine Capacity: Twenty, thirty, or forty rounds
Bartocci adds that the original factory-produced AR-18 magazines were unreliable, but they worked just fine with standard AR-15 mags; the latter were accommodated by making the mag catch cut on the right side.
The AR-18 was never officially adopted by any country’s military or police forces as its standard service rifle. However, it influenced many later rifles such as the Japanese Howa Type 89, German Heckler & Koch HK G36, Belgian FN F2000, the Singaporean SAR-80 and SR-88, the American Adaptive Combat Rifle (ACR), and the (infamous) British SA80.
The Armalite and the IRA
The Irish Republican Army, or more specifically the Cold War iteration of the IRA, that being the Provisional IRA (PIRA; informally the “Provos”) is the terrorist group alluded to at the beginning of this article that adopted the AR-18, which they nicknamed the “Widowmaker.” And yes, I am well aware of the saying “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
It could be said that the AR-18 was to the Provos what the Thompson submachine gun, aka the “Tommy Gun,” was to the original IRA. Indeed, the Provos even dedicated a song to the gun titled “My Little Armalite”:
“And it’s down Along the Falls Road, that’s where I long to be,
Lying in the dark with a Provo company,
A comrade on my left and another on me right
And a clip of ammunition for me little Armalite.”
Accordingly, there’s also a famous photo of a female Provo “volunteer on active service in West Belfast” putting on a show of force with her Armalite. The gun was incorporated into the PIRA’s twin-track “Armalite and ballot box” strategy, a phrase coined by leading Provisional Republican, Danny Morrison.
So, what was it about the AR-18 that the PIRA found so bloody appealing? Liam A. Ryan of HubPages quotes the late Irish Republican Brendan Hughes in a September 2021 article:
“It folded, it could be dumped in water, and we were fascinated by this weapon … The Armalites made all the difference, not just in the Lower Falls, but in Belfast, and I loved them. I loved the Armalite. They were so compact, so easy to fire, so easy to maintain, not like the old rifles like the Garand, the .303 [Lee Enfield] – they had to be oiled all the time. Armalites were much easier to handle.”
Or as one bit of graffiti propaganda proclaimed: ”God created the Irish. The Armalite made us equal!”
The weapon did indeed help put the Provos on a somewhat more equal footing weaponry-wise with the British Army’s L1A1 Self Loading Rifle (SLR) and Sterling L2A3 submachine gun. But it wasn’t enough to help them win the war.
AR-180 Civilian Market Version
For those of you who are either unwilling or unable to spend the money on a genuine full-auto AR-18, not to mention the BATFE paperwork headaches, you have a less expensive alternative, assuming you don’t live in a state or municipality that bans those oh-so-evil (sarcasm mode fully engaged there) so-called “assault weapons”: the AR-180 semiauto-only civilian market version. True Gun Value states that “An AR 180 rifle is currently worth an average price of $2,189.81 used. The 12-month average price is $2,050.17 used.”
The total number of AR-180s built far outstrips those of mil-spec AR-18s, with 21,478 of the former reportedly produced.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
Image: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.
