A Mysterious Brazilian ArmaLite AR-18

Ronaldo came across a negative of a photo of an AR-18 he photographed at the Brazilian Army’s Fábrica de Itajubá back in October 1982. The gun is unusual for having a rifle-length handguard, carbine-length barrel and rifle-style flash suppressor. It also features a fore grip that matches the pistol grip’s design but it is not a repurposed pistol grip (it has no trigger guard cut out).

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Maybe you and your readers may be interested in the enclosed (poor quality, scanned from an old negative) photo of a most unusual — at least for me – ArmaLite AR-18 rifle. It seems to be a very early production example, as reveals the small cocking handle straight to the right side, and features the standard rifle-size handguard, but its barrel is definitely shorter, maybe with the same length of the carbine barrel. The flash hider is the prong type (the carbines had a conical one). Of course, the forward support grip is well to the front of the gun.

I photographed this specimen at the Brazilian Army Fábrica de Itajubá (Itajubá Factory), now part of IMBEL, in October, 1982. I just found this single negative, and I don’t recall having talken notes of markings, much less photographing it in detail. Shame on me!

Could anyone throw some light on this curious AR-18? An/or have any reliable reference on the actual legth of the carbine versions barrels? I believe there have been three of them.