Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms :

raid
An operation to temporarily seize an area in order to secure information, confuse an adversary, capture personnel or equipment, or to destroy a capability. It ends with a planned withdrawal upon completion of the assigned mission.
I just found the above (google makes things like that ridiculously easy - and on top of that for free).

Hours earlier I wrote two own definitions based on what I heard and read about the usage of the word in military contexts:

A surprise attack with limited objectives and a planned withdrawal prior to effective intervention of opposing forces' higher level reserves.
The second one can be applied to more levels, up to foreign policy:

The offensive exploitation of a limited net advantage, avoiding entanglement (commitment) beyond the limit of this net advantage.

I don't remember this word from doctrinal publications (or non-published works), so I'm wondering whether I got this right (not my mother tongue, after all).



The concept caught my attention to the extent that I began to frame everything desirable in land war either as a raid or as an ambush (kinda like Wilf labelling everything a patrol )...

Btw, the German language has apparently not established a word for this; all translations differ somewhat.