This is a definitional thing, right? Laymen think of "airstrike" in terms of anything coming from the air, but the military use of the term has always reflecte

This is a definitional thing, right? Laymen think of "airstrike" in terms of anything coming from the air, but the military use of the term has always reflected the very different nature of long-range bombing mission and (say) helicopter support of infantry units. > "Apaches for example, conduct close combat attacks as a maneuver element supporting a ground force in contact with the enemy. I would not consider this in the category of 'airstrike.'" This is reflected in the fact that the helicopters are parts of the Army, not Navy or Air Force. So you can certainly criticize the use of this term since it may prey on predictable/reasonable civilian misunderstanding of military language, but it's hard to agree with the author that > The media and others have depended on these figures for years with the understanding they are a comprehensive rollup of all American and coalition activity...no one from the military ever has come forward to clarify that it is wholly incomplete. unless the Army was also failing to include it in something like "groundstrikes". My grandmother might think that the terms "wireless carrier" and "wireless data" should clearly cover WiFi, based on the plain meaning of the words, but it just turns out that this isn't included in the technical definitions. Yes, if someone technical was profiting off this predictable confusion it would be bad and possibly malicious, but it's not accurate to describe someone using these technical names as "inaccurate" or "quietly excluded".