One obvious but important observation about those powers that seek to maintain superiority over a medium is that their means to do so are overt, obvious, and continuous: Napoleon's armies, the Allies? WWII fleets and convoys, and the US air presence in Vietnam all fit this description. Accordingly, the means employed to deny superiority uniformly take on alternative characteristics: stealth, surprise, and varying tempo of operations. Russian armies proved ever elusive to Napoleon, evading battle, striking with Cossack raids on flanks and the rear, and doing so quickly. Even more decisively, German U-boats attacked targets without warning, and at high tempo, often escaping the scene of attack before their torpedoes even struck. North Vietnamese SAM and anti-aircraft batteries relied often on ambush methods to achieve success, as a founder of the Naval Fighter Weapons School noted: "They had timed us so many times on our bombing runs that they knew how long we were going to be there, and when we were going out." SAM sites, including radars and launchers, were highly mobile, and could relocate in under four hours.

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Shaw, John E. "On Cossacks, Subs, and SAMs: Defeating Challenges to U.S. Space Superiority." High Frontier Journal. (Winter 2005): 23. [ 6 quotes ] [ page 24 ]