The Barrett Firearms company was founded by the Ronnie Barrett for a single purpose of building semi-automatic rifles chambered for powerful .50BMG ammunition, originally developed for and used in Browning M2HB heavy machine guns. Barrett began his work in early 1980s and first working rifles were available in 1982, hence the designation M82. Barrett continued to develop his rifle through 1980s, and developed improved M82A1 rifle by 1986. The first real success was the purchase of about 100 M82A1 rifles by the Sweden Army in 1989. Major success followed in 1990 - 1991, when US Military purchased numbers of the M82A1 during the operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq. About 125 rifles were initially bought by US Marine Corps, orders from US Army and Air Force followed soon. The M82A1 isknown for US Military as the SASR - "Special Applications Scoped Rifle",and it was and still is used as an anti-materiel weapon and EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) tool. The long effective range along with high energy and availability of highly effective ammunition such as API and Raufoss M213 allows for effective operations against targets like radar cabins, trucks, parked aircrafts and soon. M82 also can be used to defeat enemy snipers or criminals from stand off range or when targets are behind the cover, but the anti-personnel work is not a major application for Barrett M82 (or any other .50BMG rifle, for that matter).
Further development led to the M82A2 bull-pup rifle (1987), which was designed to be fired from the shoulder, but did not succeed