countercombatant

English

Adjective

countercombatant (not comparable)

Targeting or countering combatants. (Describing, for example, a strike that targets enemy troop concentrations, as opposed to a counterindustrial strike that targets enemy industry.)
- 1979, Worldview, page 48:
  In this and other articles Russett advocated a countercombatant deterrent. The Russians are adequately deterred by a credible threat that the U.S. can and will wipe out their army on the Chinese border; there is no need to aim at […]
- 1985, Kenneth M. Currie, Gregory Varhall, The Soviet Union: What Lies Ahead? : Military-political Affairs in the 1980s, page 388:
  It is the thesis of this article that the broad outlines of such a deterrent would include an ethnic-based countercombatant, counterindustrial targeting doctrine. Within this framework, declaratory policies and force procurement […]
- 1998 July 23, Stephen J. Cimbala, The Past and Future of Nuclear Deterrence, Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 20:
  Post-Cold War U.S. nuclear counterforce could allow for countercombatant targeting against military infrastructure and power projection capabilities of armies, navies, and air forces, without seeking the destabilizing […]
- 2021 December 13, Charles Kegley, After The Cold War: Questioning The Morality Of Nuclear Deterrence, Routledge, →ISBN:
  the popular understanding nor in the U.S. security elite community is there sufficient appreciation of the possibilities and requirements of a countercombatant strategy.
(heraldry, of two animals) Facing each other (like combattant animals), especially in on either side of a charge.
- 1790, Sir Egerton Brydges, The Topographer: Containing a Variety of Original Articles, Illustrative of the Local History and Antiquities of England, page 78:
  Arms. G. 2 lions countercombatant O. quartering A. on a pale B. 3—A.
- 1884, Bernard Burke, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales: Comprising a Registry of Armorial Bearings from the Earliest to the Present Time, page 480:
  Quarterly, 1st gu. on a chev. ar. a rose betw. two lions countercombatant of the first, for HEPBURN; 2nd, az. a ship or, her sails furled ar. within a double tressure flory counterflory of the second, as Duke of Orkney: 3rd […]

Alternative forms

counter-combatant
counter-combattant (heraldry)