Chartered Industries of Singapore was founded in 1967, and started making M16 rifles under license in 1970. These were sold to the Singaporean military as well as Thailand. To get out of their licensing agreement with Colt, the company purchased the rights to Frank Waters’ the SAR-80 rifle, and then iterated that design to the SR-88 internally. The SR-88 was manufactured from 1988 until 1995, and the improved SR-88A was introduced in 1990 and manufactured until 2000. It was used by Singapore once again, and also sold in some quantity to Slovenia.
The SR-88A uses a forged aluminum lower receiver and a stamped upper. It has an AR-18 style rotating bolt with a long stroke gas piston.
Thanks to Sellier & Bellot for giving me access to this pair of very scarce SR-88A rifle and carbine to film for you!
It is always interesting to see where designs fail, and what they do to correct the issues once they’re identified. I don’t think the SAR-series rifles really received enough in the way of attention or money to fully realize their potential.
This is one of the advantages of working with a fully matured design; you know where all the issues are, and you can correct them. If you’ve got the wit and wisdom to do so, that is…
My take on things is that you ought to have a “living Technical Data Package” system going, and what should happen is that you take a generational approach to your weapons. First generation gets fielded, lives its life out there with the troops, and then you pick certain points to take those weapons back in and evaluate how they’re being used, and where the wear and breakage points are. Second generation takes those into account, and you field the corrections after a round of field testing to ensure that the corrections are actually correcting the issues, not making them worse. Once you’ve done that, production and fielding of the second generation takes place once your first generation has reached the end of its economic lifespan… Rinse, repeat. You should only be doing full-scale replacement of systems whenever entirely new technologies or needs come along.
I’m still of the opinion that the NGSW “requirements” are unsupported in reality. You will note, I again point out, that the Ukrainians and Russians are not out there decrying the failure of their weapons, despite the amount of body armor they’re deploying. If anything, I think the actions in Ukraine are highlighting a certain set of issues with regards to the weight and actual utility of body armor; I’m appalled at the number of videos showing exhausted and completely spent soldiers just staring up at the drones killing them. My suspicion is that what we’re not seeing would be the preamble to all of that, namely those poor stupid bastards being chased around by the drones before they reach the point where they’re just too apathetic to care. The heavy body armor that they’re all wearing, or which they’ve discarded at the point of slaughter would argue that the armor is playing an inimical role in all of it.
It’s nice to have, armor, but… I’m unconvinced that it’s a net good for the current environment. At least, in some roles… I think I’d prefer to be running around with an easily discarded day pack, if I were in Ukraine, and be able to get to ground as quickly as possible. You’re not going to be able to armor people’s limbs and peripheral parts effectively enough to preclude having them turned into bloody sieves by fragments from the FPV drone warheads, soooo… Why are we wearing body armor, again?
This whole thing is an example of a tactical/technological inflection point, and I don’t think that anyone out there is entirely on the right side of it. I’m pretty sure that were we able to get at the actual on-the-ground data, we’d find that body armor is playing an entirely counter-intuitive role and is far more deleterious to things than actually helpful… I mean, great: You’re not getting fatal bullet and fragment wounds to your torso, but you’re dead anyway from heat exhaustion, plain physical exhaustion, and having your exposed bits and bobs turned into hamburger… Not sure what the armor is helping there, really.
While modern body armour does allow more soldiers to survive, they survive with different long-term injuries like amputations or closed brain injuries that doctors are struggling to learn how to treat. PTSD has always been a factor in wars, only the term changes over time: soldiers’ heart, shell shock, battle fatigue, PTSD, operational stress injury, …
make them sweat and chafe
– Sun Tzu
It’s not a horrible strategy…
Every time I see one of those “Drop hand grenade on Russian” video clips, I shudder and ask myself what the preceding 30 minutes or so looked for the poor bastard. I think there’s a deliberate policy of not showing those parts of the videos, because if they did, then it would be a hell of a lot less sympathetic for the side showing them. You would probably feel sorry for the “victims”, were you to see “the rest of the story…”
The apathy and resignation you’re seeing? I’m pretty sure that’s because the guys showing it have been run down like prey, and they’re so worn out by the sheer existential horror of their situations that they just want it all to end. That’s why you see the grenades come out, and the guys eating their muzzles; they’re at the absolute end of their ropes, and suicide is preferable to being hounded a few more meters by the drones.
I can’t imagine how you’d get to the point where doing that via drone would be something you could live with, but then I also can’t quite put myself into the boots of the Ukrainians who’ve been victimized by the Russians for generations, either. The whole thing is absolutely dehumanizing, and I dread the final positions we’re all going to wind up.
Does sort of remind me of that supposed quote from antiquity from some famous figure seeing a new weapon… “…alas, the valor of man is extinguished…” The whole affair is getting even worse than it was in my youth, and I thought things like mines were dreadful affairs. Now? The damn warheads follow you home and blow up in your damn shelters…
All of this mess with the drones could have been avoided if someone nuked Putin and all his cronies.
Yeah, but then the problem would be on a whole other scale. I’m personally not ready for wearing assless chaps and playing Mad Max, sooooo… I’m kinda glad they didn’t.
I 100% agree that Putin is a bad man, an idiot, and the worst thing that has ever happened to Russia in this century, but… I’m also not of the opinion that it’s worth a global thermonuclear war to get rid of him, either.
I just feel a certain empathy for all the credulous fools that followed his colors, and the victims created by his ineptitude and power-lust. Personally, I believe it’s just more grist for my mill declaring that the majority of the people we elevate to positions of authority absolutely do not belong there. Either in Russia, or anywhere else… The amount of folly and idiotic bloodshed they’ve all caused? A pox upon all of their houses.
Its not just Putin, many russian sheeple believe that they are waging a defensive war, by occupying (parts of) Ukraine. They love “Putin strong man,make russia strong”, no matter that 50 miles out of moscow in 21st century there are villages with no utilities or asphalted roads. Maybe you could pity illiterate peasants in 18 or 19th century, but today?
Then again, many (or most?) people in US perceived being in Iraq and Afghanistan (thats not even on the same continent, let alone a neighbour country) was a “defensive war”.
Tbh I have no sympathy for superpowers and their imperialistic excuses, no matter how “humanitarian” they are proclaimed. Because result is always a bloodbath of innocent people.
To be honest, we’re drifting far off the purpose of this blog in this sub-thread, and I could diatribe considerably on the issue you imply.
I would, however, point out that it’s an odd sort of “imperialism” that goes into a nation like Iraq, does the repair and maintenance work that the previous totalitarian regime hadn’t done since the 1960s, and then helps said nation auction its oil rights and production to the highest bidder, which was not the supposed “imperialist” nation in question.
By contrast, the other former superpower is hell-bent on “putting the band back together” by brute force and genocidal violence. Contrast the condition of Syria with that of Iraq; even Fallujah looks like a better option than, say… Homs. Or, any other dissenting Syrian city/province that the Russians bombed flat for their buddy Bashar.
I would agree that US occupation brought prosperity to many, if not all, ww2 “loser” countries where they were stationed; on the other end, life under Soviets/russians liberation boot quickly turned into hell for eastern europe. Its hard to percieve what russian brotherly hug could bring to Ukraine, as even during Ussr, Ukraine had bigger GDP than Russia. Their main cultural tenets are poverty (for 80% of population), misery and rampant corruption.
Why? It was you covey of call-boys for globalist Geld that provoked war with Russia. Trying to pimp Ukraine into NATO.
Last and latest insane video is of poor SOB who commited a suicide with grenade 5 seconds after a drone dropped bomb missed him by something like 10,12 feet, apparently not even wounding him.
Is that flood of suicides some official russian instruction to soldiers, maybe they are threatened that they should never become POWs, lest the family war pension would not be awarded.
It reeks of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers on Okinawa, TBH.
I’d had a higher opinion of modern Russians, before these last few years. Now, I realize that not all that much has changed since the days of Ivan the Terrible. The total disrespect for human life, and the indifference to what is happening to their men on the front lines is depressing, particularly when you realize that you’d have likely seen much the same thing on any major Russian battlefield going back hundreds of years.
Long before this sad war, it was known that conscription for young 19-20yo men for their army was insane hazing hell that yielded every year a number of suicides and dozens of mentally and physically disabled persons.
In famous ww2 movie Enemy at the gates, there is a shocking intro sequence that was historically false and fabrication (it however stuck into collective cinephile psyche and was often discussed as a fact), but now, seeing all this, it may as well be true, even worse things probably happened.
I had the interesting experience of running into a couple of real, live Soviet-era veterans of conscription into the Soviet Army, who were serving in the US Army. It was… Interesting.
One of them was absurdly grateful for every little thing you did for him, as if the basic obligations of duty and care between NCO and soldier were somehow things of wonder: “Oh, my God… You brought me water, on this jobsite? I get to eat food? You’re not beating me? I LOVE YOU!!!”
Working with him and handling him as a leader was as if you’d adopted an abused Golden Retriever or something, and the dog knew damn good and well what you’d saved him from. It was surreal and disturbing, because you were left wondering at what his life must have been like, to have those expectations…
The other guy was vaguely contemptuous of everything, in that he seemed to think that the absence of abuse and deprivation was somehow indicative of weakness, and that military virtue and toughness were derived from having the snot abused out of you.
I only interacted with those two occasionally, and it was a lot like dealing with victims of family abuse. The behaviors tracked perfectly with people that had been really badly abused, and then taken out of the abusive relationship. Adult children of alcoholics syndrome, basically.
Their stories were interesting, although they came across as “No way that happened…” to most of us. I tended towards “Yeah, that was likely how it was…”
Observing the behavior of the Russian Army from my current standpoint, an awful lot of that “victims of an abusive relationship” feel comes through… The apathy, the half-ass performance, the low standards when nobody senior is around to observe… You watched the videos taken of those stalled convoys north of Kyiv, and you could only marvel at the insouciant attitude towards basic tactical realities… No air guards, no security elements out on the ground at halts, the troops just milling around when locals came up on them, trading stuff… It was like seeing raw troops, basic trainees on their way to their first exercise.
Which was totally consistent with the situation reported to me by those two former Soviet army guys.
There was a video by a Russian soldier[and others ] being hunted by several drones. He was hiding in thick woods & brush . The sound of those drones overhead were the stuff of dystopian nightmares. A new ptsd trigger big time.
Is it known if Singapore set up a complete rifle production, including barrel making etc?
The reports I’ve read say that Chartered Industries set up all the facilities to be independent of any outside influence over production.
Great video , you forgot to mention the difference in the handguard designs between full size and carbine, aswell as point out why they are called the baby ultimax, does it have close to ultimax 100 constant recoil dampening effect or just use some common design elements?
These are more prominently used to this day in the Pacific Islands regions mainly Solomon Islands, PNG, Fiji, Bougainville.
please do find a Sr88 manual that you can upload and whilst your at it redo your ultimax 100 manual that was uploaded with many missing pages.
In addition the stock design is for added grip in the hollow centre whilst using Bayonet in running charges.