DEW runs from soft to hard, and in doing so touches exactly on the EW material of earlier chapters:
- Dazzle — temporarily blinding a sensor or seeker (e.g. overwhelming an EO/IR seeker, Infrared–7). Reversible.
- Deny / disrupt — upsetting electronics so that a system (temporarily) fails.
- Destroy — permanent damage to components or structure.
As a result, the line between electronic attack (soft kill, Electronic Counter Measures) and kinetic destruction (hard kill) blurs. An HPM is essentially a jammer with so much power that it does not just disrupt but destroys — and a laser dazzler is in effect EA with photons instead of radio waves.