page_title: ArmaLite AR-18
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: ArmaLite AR-18 / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: A Sterling armament AR-180 on display at the National Firearm Museum.
context_page_description: The ArmaLite AR-18 is a gas-operated assault rifle chambered for 5.56×45mm NATO ammunition. The AR-18 was designed at ArmaLite in California by Arthur Miller, Eugene Stoner, George Sullivan, and Charles Dorchester in 1963 as an alternative to the ArmaLite AR-15 design, which had just been selected by the U.S. military as the M16. A semi-automatic version known as the AR-180 was later produced for the civilian market. While the AR-18 was never adopted as the standard service rifle of any nation, its production licence was sold to companies in Japan and the United Kingdom, and it is said to have influenced many later weapons such as the British SA80, the Singaporean SAR-80 and SR-88, the American Adaptive Combat Rifle, the Belgian FN F2000, the Japanese Howa Type 89 and the German Heckler and Koch G36.
context_section_description: The AR-18 was put into limited production at ArmaLite's machine shop and offices in Costa Mesa, California. A semi-automatic version of the AR-18 known as the AR-180 was later produced for the civilian market between 1969 and 1972. ArmaLite was never equipped to build small arms on a production basis, and the Costa Mesa AR-18 and AR-180 rifles frequently show evidence of hand-fitting. A production license was granted to Nederlandsche Wapen-en Munitiefabriek (NWM) of Den Bosch, the Netherlands, but it is doubtful that any AR-18 rifles were actually produced there.  A license to produce the AR-18/180 was then sold to Howa Machinery Co., of Japan, and the rifle was produced from 1970 until 1974, when new controls on export of military arms by the Japanese government forced the company to cease all small arms production. Between 1975 and 1978, there was a brief pause in production as ArmaLite was finalizing an agreement with Sterling Armaments Company to produce the rifle under license. From 1979 until 1985, the Sterling Armaments Company of Dagenham, Essex, in the United Kingdom produced the AR-18 and AR-180.In 1983, ArmaLite was sold to Eslico Tool & Manufacturing of the Philipines, who planned to pitch the AR-18 as a replacement for the license-produced M16A1 then in service with the Armed Forces of the Philippines. As a result, production stopped in 1985 as the tooling was sent to the Philippines. In mid-1968 ArmaLite set up pilot production in its Costa Mesa plant producing 1,171 AR-18s and 4,018 AR-180s between 1969 and 1972. Howa produced 3,927 AR-180s between 1970 and 1974. Sterling manufactured 12,362 AR-180s between 1979 and 1985. In all, just 21,478 AR-180s were manufactured over 16 years of production between 1969 and 1985.
caption: A Sterling Armaments AR-180 on display at the National Firearms Museum
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