Reckon the hit will be on the surveillance apparatus. Maybe a no-fly zone declaration first, then take out the drones. The West may up the anti by accompanying the drones with piloted " protection".

That will place US servicemen on the front line as would the intrusion of manned reconnaissance planes.

If the US go that far then it will be because they want the casus belli of dead US servicemen to sell to their media...at this point Russia will need to calculate if the US wants a direct war.

Of course the US has a diminishing ability to wage it even with the aid of NATO Europe, what with all the high-profile high-tech boxes already mangled & rusty now littering the fields of Ukraine alongside the unfortunate corpses of the biggest "NATO-trained" army...outside the US... so do they skip the ground war and go straight for the " first strike" nuclear inferno?

Surely we say, somebody must at some point ask if the existence or not of a bankrupt corrupt failed state is important enough to risk reducing the world to poisonous ashes. Well we all know including them that it's not...so what is?
Is it the last chance Salon of winning a US " Unipolar " world? but surely in that world the US would merely be king of a wasteland.

But hey ho...in the context of life and death humans are only as clever as their stupidest action.
And on stupid I now habitually look at our UK and European politicians. They are all my age and brought up in the cold war mentality that we were in the " good" side of freedom in a fight against a totalitarian regime in the east.

The programming was early and extensive so unfortunately they have not even got to the stage mentally where the USSR voluntary dissolved thus removing any ideological excuse for hostilities. That was well over thirty years ago but the penny has. still. to. drop...

So...being expendable as well as stupid maybe they will use Europeans in any manned provocation flight?

Now that's a winning idea...