Suppressive fire

Common card · No. 367903

Suppressive fire is a military tactic used to indirectly and temporarily immobilize an enemy by applying continuous firepower on the enemy's position. In military science, and according to the definition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), suppression fire is: "Fire that degrades the performance of a target below the level needed to fulfil its mission." When used to protect exposed friendly troops advancing on the battlefield, it is commonly called covering fire. It is one of three types of fire support, which is defined by NATO as "the application of fire, coordinated with the maneuver of forces, to destroy, neutralise or suppress the enemy." Before NATO defined the term, the British and Commonwealth armies generally used "neutralisation" with the same definition as suppression. NATO now defines neutralisation as "fire delivered to render a target temporarily ineffective or unusable."

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