Irregular military refers to any non-standard military. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military organization, or to the type of tactics used.
An irregular military organization is a military organization which is not part of the regular army organization of a party to a military conflict. Without standard military unit organization, various more general names are used; such organizations may also be called a "troop," "group," "unit," "column," "band," or "force."
Irregulars are soldiers or warriors that are members of these organizations, or are members of special military units that employ irregular military tactics. This also applies to irregular troops, irregular infantry and irregular cavalry.
Irregular warfare is warfare employing the tactics commonly used by irregular military organizations. This involves avoiding large-scale combats, and focusing on small, stealthy, hit and run engagements.
Read more about Irregular Military: Other Names For Irregular Military Formations, Regular Military Units Which Use Irregular Military Tactics, Effectiveness, Historical Reliance On Irregulars, Examples of Irregular Military, Irregulars in Modern Warfare
Famous quotes containing the words irregular and/or military:
“My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy—a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us—which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Nothing changes my twenty-six years in the military. I continue to love it and everything it stands for and everything I was able to accomplish in it. To put up a wall against the military because of one regulation would be doing the same thing that the regulation does in terms of negating people.”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)