Why doesn't 'ar' work like the manpage says?

I'm trying to use 'ar' included in Debian Wheezy armel version of binutils and it doesn't seem to operate like on other systems I've encountered. Some sample output from the command-line: $ ar Usage: ar [options] archive Generate an index to speed access to archives The options are: @ Read options from --plugin Load the specified plugin -t Update the archive's symbol map timestamp -h --help Print this help message -v --version Print version information ar: supported targets: elf32-littlearm elf32-bigarm elf32-little elf32-big plugin srec symbolsrec verilog tekhex binary ihex $ ar -crs something.a file1.o file2.o ar: invalid option -- 'c' ar: invalid option -- 'r' ar: invalid option -- 's' What am I missing here? Why do I always get the invalid option message?