A no-fly zone in Ukraine is pure force-on-force. People flying Russian military helicopters and airplanes cannot reasonably be called civilians. In force-on-force encounters, we can clean Russian clocks. But it’s rarely ever that “neat”, so to speak. Mistakes develop, intentions are misinterpreted, blue-on-blue fires occur.
The law of unintended consequences comes into play.
As we’ve seen so many times it’s become tiresome, the only purpose of a no-fly zone is to establish a situation where mistakes WILL be made — or even deliberate “false flag” incidents WILL be staged — as a predicate for full U.S. military intervention.
I don’t know if it’s comical or sad to see Americans fall for this crap every time.