Żargon
Teksty o wojsku pisze się dla tych, którzy już mają to słownictwo. Oto ono, prostym językiem. Każdy termin, który ten serwis wyjaśnia, jest zdefiniowany raz, tutaj, i ta sama definicja obowiązuje wszędzie tam, gdzie słowo pojawi się w artykule.
Ten dokument nie został jeszcze przetłumaczony. Jest publikowany po angielsku, dopóki jego brzmienie nie zostanie ustalone.
A
3terminy
- Air defense
- The weapons and radars used to stop aircraft, missiles and drones reaching a target. It is normally described in layers: short-range systems cover one site or one column of vehicles, longer-range systems cover a city or a whole region.
- Air superiority
- The state in which one side can fly over an area without serious interference while the other side cannot. It is a matter of degree rather than a switch, and "air supremacy" is the stronger version of it.
- Attrition
- Wearing an opponent down by destroying people, equipment and supplies faster than they can be replaced, rather than by taking ground. A war of attrition is decided by whoever can absorb losses for longer.
B
1termin
- Brigade
- A formation of roughly 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers built out of several battalions. It is usually the smallest unit that carries everything it needs to fight on its own, including its own artillery, engineers and supply.
C
2terminy
- Combined arms
- Using different kinds of force together so that each covers the weaknesses of the others: infantry, armor, artillery, engineers and air support attacking as one piece. Assaults that go in without one of those parts tend to fail expensively.
- Counter-battery fire
- Shooting back at the other side’s artillery. Radar traces an incoming shell backwards to the gun that fired it and return fire follows within minutes, which is why guns move immediately after firing.
D
3terminy
- Deconfliction
- An arrangement that stops two forces operating in the same airspace or the same ground area from hitting each other by accident. In practice it is a phone line, a set of agreed routes, or altitudes and times each side keeps to.
- Doctrine
- The body of written ideas an armed force trains and fights by: how it expects to attack, to defend, and to keep itself supplied. It is the main reason two armies holding similar equipment behave very differently.
- Drone
- An aircraft with no pilot on board, flown by remote control or along a programmed route. The word covers everything from a hand-launched camera drone watching one field to an aircraft the size of a small airliner.
E
2terminy
- Electronic warfare
- Interfering with the other side’s use of the radio spectrum: jamming a drone’s control link, drowning out a satellite navigation signal, or listening to a transmitter in order to find it.
- Escalation
- A step that widens a conflict, such as a new weapon, a new class of target, or a new participant. "Escalation control" is the attempt to apply more pressure without setting off a response nobody can stop.
F
1termin
- FPV drone
- First person view drone. A small, cheap aircraft flown by an operator wearing a headset that shows the drone’s own camera. Most are flown into a target and destroyed with it.
G
1termin
- Glide bomb
- An ordinary bomb fitted with wings and a guidance kit so that it can be released tens of kilometers away and glide the rest of the distance. It lets the aircraft turn back before it enters the range of the defenses.
L
2terminy
- Logistics
- Everything that keeps a force fed, fueled, armed, repaired and moving. Offensives usually stop when the logistics runs out rather than when the soldiers do.
- Loitering munition
- A weapon that flies to an area, circles while it or its operator looks for a target, and then attacks it. It sits between a drone and a missile, and it is often called a kamikaze drone.
M
1termin
- MANPADS
- Man-portable air defense system. A shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile carried by one or two soldiers and used against low-flying aircraft and helicopters at short range.
O
2terminy
- Open-source intelligence
- Conclusions drawn from material anyone can obtain: satellite photographs, flight and ship tracking, company records, and video posted in public. Often shortened to OSINT. It is not a secret source, and it fails in its own particular ways.
- Order of battle
- The list of which units an armed force has, where they are, and who commands them. Working out an opponent’s order of battle is one of the oldest tasks in military intelligence.
S
4terminy
- Salient
- A bulge in the front line where one side has pushed into ground held by the other. It can be attacked from three sides at once, which makes it dangerous for whoever is holding it.
- Sortie
- One flight by one aircraft, counted from take-off to landing. Air campaigns are measured in sorties per day rather than in aircraft, because one aircraft flies several.
- Standoff
- Attacking from far enough away to stay outside the defender’s reach. A standoff weapon is one launched from that distance, which is why the range of a weapon can matter as much as its accuracy.
- Suppression of enemy air defenses
- Attacks meant to destroy or silence the radars and launchers that would otherwise shoot down aircraft. Silencing counts: a radar crew that switches off to avoid being hit has been suppressed without being destroyed.