No. It’s not anti-((air defense) searchlight) (an unspecified device against air defense searchlights) but (anti-(air defense)) searchlight (searchlight against air defense).
Still better than what the original title suggests: ((anti-air) defense) searchlight (defensive searchlight against air).
My minor pet peeve in the English language is that hyphenated multi-word terms do not carry the hyphen all the way.
I would prefer anti-air-defence to anti-air defence because they’re not defending against air.
anti-air-defense-searchlight*
No. It’s not
anti-((air defense) searchlight)(an unspecified device against air defense searchlights) but(anti-(air defense)) searchlight(searchlight against air defense).Still better than what the original title suggests:
((anti-air) defense) searchlight(defensive searchlight against air).Or you could follow the Germans’ way and call it an
antiairdefencesearchlicht(meaning depends on context).Capital letter, too.
𝔏𝔲𝔣𝔱𝔴𝔞𝔣𝔣𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔱𝔬̈𝔯𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔰𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔥𝔩𝔯𝔢𝔣𝔩𝔢𝔨𝔱𝔬𝔯
I’m more annoyed by the whole thing, call it air defence.
Anti air defence sounds like what you use to shoot down the AA guns.
And don’t even get me started on inflammable.
Couldn’t anti-air-defence be defence against anti-air?