WordNet
n. fire on or about a weapon system to degrade its performance below what is needed to fulfill its mission objectives
Wikipedia
In military science, suppressive fire (commonly called covering fire) is "fire that degrades the performance of an enemy force below the level needed to fulfill its mission. Suppression is usually only effective for the duration of the fire". It is one of three types of fire support, which is defined by NATO as "the application of fire, coordinated with the manoeuvre of forces, to destroy, neutralize or suppress the enemy."
Before NATO defined the term, the British and Commonwealth armies generally used "neutralisation" with the same definition as suppression. NATO now defines neutralization as "fire delivered to render a target temporarily ineffective or unusable."
Usage examples of "suppressive fire".
More gunfire from beside him, the men who had been providing suppressive fire were potshotting the plastique balls Rourke and Daszrozinski had missed, chunks of flooring rising up, collapsing downward, screams, the gunfire from the KGB positions sporadic now.
Lon did not know if that was because the suppressive fire by the rest of the company was so successful or if the Belletieners were simply not organized yet.
Not without using suppressive fire that would kill all the hostages, anyway.
With men screaming behind him, he lay down suppressive fire, targeting windows at random, still not knowing where the hell the snipers were.
A couple of the other landcruisers in the squadron slowed down, poured suppressive fire into the trees.
Miller then laid down the best suppressive fire he could manage with his rifle.
He looked crazy, and he was already sweeping out streams like some combat cop laying down suppressive fire.
He thought all that in a tiny slice of time, pivoting the Bad News and laying out heavy suppressive fire, blowing beautiful friezes to cinders and fountaining tiles from the deck to keep the enemy's head down.