Why raid, battle, attack, and operation overlap

What distinguishes an attack, raid, action, skirmish, battle, and operation?

The terms overlap and depend heavily on the writer's perspective: an operation may include a raid or battle, while the same event can be classified differently in different accounts.

Military events can be described at different scales and from different institutional viewpoints. An operation is often the broad plan, but it may contain attacks, raids, or battles, and historians may choose different labels for the same episode. Readers should therefore check what an author means rather than assume the category settles the event's size or significance.