Fusillade

A fusillade is the simultaneous and continuous firing of a group of firearms on command. It stems from the French word fusil, meaning firearm, and fusiller meaning to shoot.[1]

In the context of military tactics, the term is generally used to refer to a type of organized and concentrated gunfire from a military unit armed with small arms, and initiated by a command from a commanding officer. The term can also be used as a verb, as in "to fusillade an enemy position". Suppressing fire (done in conjunction with fire and movement) is often in the form of a fusillade.

  • Salvo or broadside refers to the simultaneous fire of naval artillery.
  • Barrage or cannonade refers to a land-based artillery strike.
  • Volley indicates a singular simultaneous discharge of a group of small arms, which is then followed by a short interval for reloading. The command to fire is re-issued before each individual volley to preserve organization. This was commonly used during the age of musketry and is still currently used in the form of the 3-volley salute.

In non-military contexts, a fusillade is used to mean a sudden flurry or outburst of activity directed at something, such as "a fusillade of questions".[2]

gollark: Interesting. Very interesting.
gollark: What is big narf? Bees enabled.
gollark: But you can still access the main content, and osmarks internet radio™, and the random stuff API!
gollark: osmarks.tk now has a yggdrasil subdomain with its AAAA record pointed at my yggdrasil IP, so all zero people using that can now connect to a (HTTP-only, missing many backend services) osmarks.tk!
gollark: Anyway, so you can... peer with me? and access osmarks.tk.

See also
  • Volley gun - A firearm which discharges a group of barrels simultaneously.

References
  1. "Yahoo". Yahoo.
  2. "the definition of fusillade". www.dictionary.com.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.