All of that is to weaken the enemy's strength, to cause the enemy eventually to be unable to prosecute the war any longer, and to force the enemy to withdraw. Not limiting their targets to personnel, enemy resources are also preferred targets. Tactically, the guerrilla army would avoid any confrontation with large units of enemy troops, but seek and eliminate small groups of soldiers to minimize losses and exhaust the opposing force. The guerrilla focuses on organizing in small units, depending on the support of the local population, as well as taking advantage of terrain more accommodating of small units. The strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around the use of a small, mobile force competing against a larger, more unwieldy one. 5 Twentieth and Twenty-First Century guerrilla conflicts.
#Guerrilla warfare definition history professional
The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, scale, and scope between the guerrilla army and the formal, professional army of the state.
However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes the specific style of warfare. The word was used to describe the fighters, and their tactics (e.g."the town was taken by the guerrillas"). The term guerrilla was used within the English language as early as 1809. The term means "little war" in Spanish, and the word, guerrilla, has been used to describe the concept since the 18th century, and perhaps earlier. Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians (or "irregulars") use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and less-mobile traditional army, or strike a vulnerable target, and withdraw almost immediately.