Military And Veterans
The M249 SAW and the Evolution of America’s Squad Automatic Weapons
From the Browning Automatic Rifle to today’s M249, the SAW has shaped infantry tactics for over a century.
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✍️By ZRIntel Editorial Team📍Charleston, WV
Lt. Val Browning, son of legendary firearms designer John Moses Browning, was the first American soldier to fire the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) in combat during World War I. The BAR was Americas first true Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) a category of firearms designed to provide sustained automatic fire at the squad level. For nearly four decades, the BAR defined U.S. infantry firepower. Feeding .30-06 from a 20-round box magazine, the M1918A2 BAR weighed 19 pounds but earned the admiration of frontline soldiers for its ability to suppress enemy positions and enable maneuver. By 1957, the Army sought a single weapon to replace the M1 Garand, the BAR, and the M3 submachine gun. The M14 rifle emerged as the compromise, but its selective-fire variants like the M14E2 proved too light for sustained automatic fire and too heavy for submachine gun roles. The result was a gap in squad-level fire support until the eventual adoption of the M249 light machine gun decades later. The story of the SAW is not merely one of technology, but of doctrine. American infantry formations increasingly recognized that the ability to lay down suppressive fire often outweighed the rifle itself as the centerpiece of squad combat. The BARs distinctive chug gave squads a sense of dominance, while later attempts to consolidate roles under the M14 revealed the limitations of one gun fits all thinking. Even today, debates continue over whether infantry units should rely on belt-fed weapons like the M249 or return to magazine-fed systems that trade firepower for mobility. The Armys Next Generation Squad Weapon program illustrates that the balance between weight, rate of fire, and caliber remains unsettled.