Noun
shooting war (plural shooting wars)
An outright war between military powers.
Coordinate terms: cold war, war of nerves
Although the shooting war is over, we are in the midst of a cold war which is getting warmer. Bernard Baruch
Korea was my first experience of fighting a shooting war and a conference table war at the same time. But I had two years of head-knocking with the Russians to teach me what it is that the Communists respect: FORCE. Mark W. Clark
“For now we seem to have averted an all-out shooting war between the United States and Iran,” Nicholas Kristof wrote. Source: Internet
It was common throughout the Cold War for NATO and Soviet submarines to stalk surface ships and other submarines in order to gather intelligence and work out tactics for sinking the vessels in the event the conflict escalated into a shooting war. Source: Internet
I don't think we can depend on market forces to stop a Hong Kong style encroachment, a war by proxy, or even a direct shooting war. Source: Internet
While a trade dispute is obviously not comparable to a shooting war, the current U.S.-China imbroglio may follow a similar pattern of months of mainly rhetoric and skirmishes before an eruption into a serious economic event. Source: Internet