What is "mission creep"

n. (context politics military idiomatic English) gradual expansion of the objectives, scope, and/or cost of a military mission without careful planning.

Mission creep is the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs. The term was originally applied exclusively to military operations, but has recently been applied to many different fields. The phrase first appeared in articles concerning the United Nations peacekeeping mission during the Somali Civil War in the Washington Post on April 15, 1993, and in the New York Times on October 10, 1993.