This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Sortie is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Sortie is a term for deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it of aircraft, ship or, in older times, of columns of troops from a fort. The unit usually has a purpose of accomplishing a specific mission, whether alone or with other aircraft or vessels.
Siege warfare
In siege warfare, a sortie, or sudden issuing of troops against the enemy from a defensive position, can be launched against the besiegers by the defenders. If the sortie is through a sally port, either to sortie or to sally can be used.
Military aviation
In military aviation, it is used to indicate the total usages of individual machines, so that (for example) one mission involving six aircraft would tally six sorties.
The use of the term for military aircraft originated in naval usage. In French, sortie literally means "exit". It has evolved to mean a short period of conflict, as in the time when the vehicles and vessels are away from their carrier or local berth.
Spaceflight
In spaceflight, especially for NASA's upcoming Constellation Program, the term sortie has been coined for a flight of the Orion spacecraft beyond the confluence of low-Earth orbit, such as a flight to the Moon or to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange Point. This term was not used by NASA for the nine Apollo flights that flew by, orbited, or landed on the Moon between 1968 and 1972.
 |
This military aviation article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 27 April 2008, at 15:09.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Sortie".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.