Our understanding of the space above our heads has shifted from an unregulated, infinite expanse of ether to a volumetric, multi-dimensional zone of competing claims and infrastructures. In modernity the elemental aspects of air—its atmospherics and meteorology—are not simply natural but productive of social relations and politics. War moved into airspace in the early 20th century as the wealthiest nation-states drew upon the new achievements of aviation to advance colonial territorialization and to overcome the limitations of trench warfare. Yet the “freedom” that aviation seemed to offer military operations created counter measures based on the 19th century British legal doctrine of Cujus set solum ejus est usque ad coelumn (“whoever owns land owns it up to the sky”). Throughout the 20th century what counted as the “sky” and who owned it shifted legally, culturally, and politically. Airspace became conceived as structured—an architecture that interacted with ideas and practices of urban, rural, national, international, commercial, military and even literary or artistic spaces. The military “no-fly zone” (NFZ) emerges out of this complex history and generates new conundrums in contemporary warfare. The NFZ is a fraught operation in a politicized space of competing objects, materials and elements that produces violent, state-sponsored inequalities.