Browning Automatic Rifle

The Browning Automatic Rifle, commonly abbreviated BAR, is a gas-operated automatic rifle designed by American firearms inventor John Browning and adopted by the United States Army in 1918, intended to give advancing infantry a portable source of automatic fire that a single soldier could carry and fire from the shoulder or hip, an approach the Army called walking fire. It arrived too late in the First World War to see extensive combat use in that conflict, but the design was retained and improved between the wars, and the BAR became a standard American squad automatic weapon through the Second World War and the Korean War, typically carried by one designated automatic rifleman per infantry squad to provide a base of sustained fire that other riflemen could maneuver around. Chambered for the powerful .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge and fed from a twenty-round box magazine, the BAR was heavier than a standard infantry rifle but lighter than a true machine gun, occupying a role between the two that later evolved into the modern squad automatic weapon concept.