 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.Soon after the adoption of the 7.62×51mm NATO M14 rifle in 1957, the U.S. Army's Continental Army Command (CONARC) began an investigation of small-caliber, high-velocity (SCHV) rifles as an offshoot of the military's existing research program, Project SALVO.