Apple Pie and Armalite are two things that are as American as it gets. AR stands for Armalite Rifle, but as many have pointed out, it might as well stand for America’s Rifle. It’s a massively successful American rifle series that’s served our country for decades and has been the dominant rifle amongst police and the average Joe. America produces plenty of foreign-designed guns, but do foreign countries produce the AR-15? You bet. Let’s take a peek at some of the foreign ARs floating around.
Germany’s Hera Arms 15th Series
Hera Arms isn’t an unknown entity in American arms. The company produces a variety of AR accessories, including a series of grips and stocks that you either love or hate. Hera is fresh off the Tomorrow War and producing a huge series of AR-15-type rifles. They all feature Hera Arms furniture, including the futuristic stock and forward grip set.
This series includes various lengths. They have rifles and carbines, which we would call SBRs. The Hera Arms 15th series has all the modern stuff you’d expect. We get a mix of six-position stocks, precision-oriented options, M-LOK rails, and Hera’s stuff. Outside of the 15th series, we have blowback-operated PCCs, AR-10s, and even straight-pull AR-type rifles. They all retail for more than 2,000 Euros, so don’t expect affordability.
Brazil’s Taurus T4
The Taurus T4 series made its way to the United States. The T4SA, in particular, sold for a seemingly very short period during the great AR rush of the 2010s. The main T4 series are fairly unremarkable foreign ARs. The T4 series directly copies the M4 style rifle with a front sight gas block, six-position stock, and quad rail.
Taurus also produces a shorty model with an 11.5-inch barrel in the same basic M4 style configuration. The Taurus T4S for American civilian sales features a free-floating rail and comes with a Keymod handguard. The Taurus T4 series even saw some American police sales as if there weren’t plenty of American options out there.
Chinese Norinco CQ
In classic Chinese fashion, the company Norinco copied the AR-15 design. It came to be in the 1980s and looks like a bizarro AR variant. The Chinese handguard and pistol grip look odd but are seemingly functional. The grip, in particular, looks like it came from a revolver. Legend has it that China acquired M16 copies from Vietnam and went to work creating their own AR.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 CQ variants were imported into the United States before the Chinese faucet was cut off after they tried to sell weapons to gang bangers. The CQ series was sold in Canada, and the Chinese evolved the weapon to match the modern options with shorter barrels, collapsing stocks, optics-ready uppers, and more. These are still made and sold for export.
Colt Canada C7 and C8
One of the best foreign AR models comes from Diemaco/Colt Canada. The famed C7 and C8 series of rifles were always forward-thinking. The original C7 didn’t waste time with a burst feature; it used spacers to adjust the length of pull, and by 1995, it even had a flat-top upper with a Weaver rail.
Since then, the series has continued to evolve. The C7A2 introduced a rifle-length upper with a collapsing stock design. The C8 series introduced the carbine design for the series that remains successful. The Colt Canada C7 and C8 remain some of the most advanced ARs out there and arguably some of the most adaptable on the market. It’s surprising that the C7 and C8 series haven’t been imported to the United States.
Russian ADAR-2-15
The Russians saw us making our own AKs and said we can’t let that one stand! Thus, they produced their own AR-15, called the ADAR-2-15. It’s most famously in Escape from Tarkov, the I’m vegan equivalent of video games for gun guys. The Adar-2-15 achieves a distinctive look by using wood for the stock and forend.
Wood on ARs looks cool, but somehow the Russians made it pretty damn ugly with a bad impression of a Dragunov stock. This might be the ugliest of the foreign ARs. The rifle uses a flat top upper design but a fixed front sight gas block. It’s fairly standard, and even the markings are just lifted from American-made AR.
The World of Foreign ARs
The world of foreign ARs doesn’t end here. It’s been copied far and wide, including by countries you’d never expect, like Iran, Taiwan, and Hungary. The AR is almost as far spread as the AK series, but they typically tend to be a bit more refined. The AR isn’t just America’s Rifle; it’s the world’s rifle.
