Definition of "harassment"
noun
countable and uncountable, plural harassments
(military) The use of repeated small-scale attacks to wear down an enemy force.
Quotations
Throughout this period, and beyond, into the rest of the battle, aircraft of various types and loadouts are crisscrossing the skies in desperate harassment attacks, with the pilots having to play constant games of "guess the carrier" to decide where to land as escort carriers are hit, sunk, disappear in columns of shell splashes, or are forced to evade at angles to the wind that make landing on them impossible.
2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 27:22 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?, archived from the original on 3 November 2022