SAR 21

The SAR 21 ("Singapore Assault Rifle - 21st Century") is a bullpup assault rifle designed and manufactured in Singapore. First revealed and subsequently adopted by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in 1999, it was designed and developed over a four-year period and was intended to replace the locally license-built M16S1 by the Singaporean Ministry of Defence (MINDEF), Singapore Army and the Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS, now ST Kinetics). Many of its design features are directly intended to counter the weaknesses of the M16S1 as encountered operationally by some infantrymen.

The rifle is being sold for export use aside from domestic use. In the United States, it is being marketed by ST Kinetics via its American subsidiary, VT Systems.

History and development

Since the mid-80s, the SAF had an outstanding requirement to come up with a replacement for their M16S1 as most of these had been in use since 1973. In 1994, a proposal by SAF was submitted to the MINDEF for options to either procure newer weapons (thought was given to purchase the M16A2) or to develop its own indigenous rifle. On 19 November 2002, a patent was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Tuck Wah Chee and Felix Tsai with the patent number 6,481,144 B1.