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The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) is a family of United States automatic rifles (or machine rifles) and light machine guns used by the United States and numerous other countries during the 20th century. The primary variant of the BAR series was the M1918, chambered for the .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge and designed by John Browning in 1917 for the U.S. Expeditionary Corps in Europe as a replacement for the French-made Chauchat and M1909 Benét–Mercié machine guns that US forces had previously been issued.

The BAR was designed to be carried by infantrymen during an assault[1]  or advance while supported by the sling over the shoulder or fired from the hip. This is a concept called "walking fire" — thought to be necessary for the individual soldier during trench warfare.[2]  The BAR never entirely lived up to the original hopes of the War Department, being neither a rifle nor a machine gun.[3]

The US Army, in practice, used the BAR as a light machine gun, often fired from a bipod (introduced on models after 1938).[4] A variant of the original M1918 BAR, the Colt Monitor Machine Rifle, remains the lightest production automatic gun to fire the .30-06 Springfield cartridge, though the limited capacity of its standard 20-round magazine tended to hamper its utility in that role.[4]