What does S&D mean in Military?

Search and destroy

Search and destroy, seek and destroy, or simply S&D is a military strategy best known for its employment in the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War. The strategy consists of inserting ground forces into hostile territory, searching out the enemy, destroying them, and withdrawing immediately afterward. The strategy was developed to take advantage of the capabilities offered by a new technology, the helicopter, which resulted in a new form of warfare, the fielding of air cavalry, and was thought to be ideally suited to counter-guerrilla jungle warfare. The complementary conventional strategy, which entailed attacking and conquering an enemy position, then fortifying and holding it indefinitely, was known as "clear and hold" or "clear and secure". In theory, since the traditional methods of "taking ground" could not be used in this war (as all disputed territory was technically already under the control of allied forces), a war of attrition would be used, with the aim of systematically and relentlessly finding and killing enemy combatants; the "body count" would be the measuring tool to determine the success of the strategy of search and destroy.

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