Just define "fighting" as doing damage to or having the potential to do
damage to an enemy during an engagement. If you are fired on by an enemy a/c
and he misses, aren't you nonetheless in combat? A missile or a Mg bullet or
a cannon shell does the fighting for its pilot.

(This may be a reach, and certainly a tad off-ng, but if a ship were fired
on by a torpedo, that would certainly constitute peril to that ship, and
combat, wouldn't it? During an engagement in the Pacific, an IJN pilot who
had just taken off alertly noted a US torpedo wake heading for his 'carrier.
He promptly sacrificed his life by diving his a/c into the water just ahead
of the torpedo (allegedly, several US witnesses to this) and saved his ship
from certain punishment. Man vs an inanimate but certainly very deadly
object. I suggest that this incident was combat.) By analogy, a pilot who
downed a robot bomb without necessarily hurting or killing himself also
engaged in combat. Whether the bomb could protect itself is not truly
relevant. The only relevant thing, I suggest, is that if left unmolested,
the device could harm your side. Any action taken to prevent its successful
conduct should be called combat.


"vzlion" wrote in message
...
Don't you have to have an adversary to have any kind of combat.
By definition combat is fighting, A missile doesn't fight, it just
flies along until it hits something, Right?

Walt
On Mon, 07 Jul 2003 15:31:33 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote: