Surgical strikes: How the world conducts them and how India did it

In general military parlance such strikes would have been considered as part of a covert counter-terrorism operation

Indian armed forces conducted surgical strikes in the early hours of Thursday across the Line of Control (LoC), involving not more than 100 commandos, in what is seen as a paradigm shift in how this government plans to deal with terrorist camps across the border. 

The term "surgical strike" has been prevalent in the international media since the days of the Gulf War, and it came to typify operations conducted by the US thereafter. 

Going by the generally accepted definition offered by experts, a surgical strike comprises a swift, intelligence-driven attack on a specific target or targets with minimum collateral