Suppressive fire
This orders every gun in any concerned battery to immediately fire whatever round and fuse is loaded, possibly from someone else's, or more than one callsign's mission. The FO may end up getting white phosphorus illumination, DPICM, and VT-HE rounds on the target in the same shot.

Direct fire weapons: A rifle or machine gun bullet only has a suppressive effect within about one metre of its trajectory.  However, both can be used to suppress an enemy within a small area, often called "winning the fire fight".
Machine gun fire is also available from armoured fighting vehicles and aircraft, notably helicopters and perhaps fixed wing aircraft such as AC-130. Automatic cannon (20–40 mm) or grenade fire may also be available and fire from larger direct fire systems such as tanks. However, limited ammunition loads mean that such systems are better suited to destructive fire against precisely identified targets unless the required suppression time period is short.
In Afghanistan, the Mujahideen often modified RPG-7 rocket launchers for use against Russian helicopters by adding a curved pipe to the end of the blast tube, which diverted the backblast, allowing the RPG to be fired upward at aircraft from a prone position. At the time, Soviet helicopters countered the threat from RPGs at landing zones by first clearing them with saturation anti-personnel suppression fire from machine guns.
The Russians used the Dragunov sniper rifle at the platoon level for providing special long-distance disrupting and suppressive fire on the battlefield, even with sudden close encounters with enemy troops in mind.

See also: Harassing fire


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