Silence fuss over air defence following (9)
I believe the answer is:
shadowing
'following' is the definition.
(I know that shadowing is a type of following)
'silence fuss over air defence' is the wordplay.
'silence fuss' becomes 'showing' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'over' indicates putting letters inside.
'air defence' becomes 'AD' (military abbreviation).
'showing' going around 'ad' is 'SHADOWING'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for shadowing that I've seen before include "Tailing" , "Trailing" .)