XPost: soc.history.war.misc, sci.military.naval

Elena Gold
Media analyst 19h

How significant is the loss of an A-50 spy plane for Russia's air force?

Yesterday, Ukraine managed to hit 2 rare Russian planes: A-50 long-range
radar detection and control aircraft (worth $330 million), and the Il-22
enemy air control center (worth $200 million).

The A-50 spy plane was downed and ended on the bottom of the Azov Sea,
with all its crew.

A50 spy plane.

The Azov Sea’s depth is only 15 meters, so the Russians will be able to
find the remains soon.

The Il-22 enemy air control center reportedly managed to land after
suffering the hit. Ukraine released the audio of a conversation, where
the aircraft crew demands rescuers to meet them on landing, saying they
had wounded on board.

Damaged Il-22 managed to return to the air field in Russia. Most likely,
it won’t be possible to repair the plane.

In June 2023, during Prigozhin’s mutiny, Wagner downed another Il-22
with 10 crew on board. It was a big loss for the Russian air forces.

Russia is trying to downplay the scale of the damage they suffered
through downing of the A50. Although they lost their best pilots and
engineers there. The best pilots, on whose training Russia spent
millions of budget rubles and many years. There will be no one to
replace them.

Crew of A50. (Archive.)

The Russian Ministry of Defense simply keeps quiet about it, and
Kremlin’s mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov has stated that he has no knowledge
of such event, when he was asked about it.

Rumors are, Putin was furious about it and yelled at Shoigu about the
loss of the plane.

The planes themselves are irreplaceable — literally. Russia has only 8
of A-50 left, but they may be in various levels of combat readiness.
Usually, half of such planes are under maintenance, due to high tech
components used (and the parts are now under western sanctions).

Russia is unable to make more of such planes at the present time.

“A50 plane, which was peacefully guiding missiles and bombs at Ukrainian cities, was treacherously shot down by the enemy.” Rest in pieces.

Typically, A-50 long-range radar reconnaissance aircraft fly at great
distances from combat zones. Their main purpose is deep reconnaissance
and support in targeting.

Valery Romanenko from the National Aviation University in Kyiv stated
that the Ukrainian attack will force the Russian army to move the A-50
away from the front line by about 100 km.

This will give Ukraine "tactical advantages" to carry out attacks on
Crimea and targets in other occupied regions, and will also help cover
ground operations and launch cruise missiles.

One of those who planned missile attacks on Ukraine, deputy commander of long-range aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Lieutenant General
Oleg Pchela, was reportedly liquidated with the downed A-50.

Colonel Markus Reisner, Austrian military historian, called the downing
of A50 “an impressive success” — not only on the battlefield, but also
in the information space. He compared the attack on the plane to the destruction of the Russian submarine in Crimea.

Ukraine once again demonstrated its ability to effectively use the
limited means that it has at its disposal. Ukrainians keep in secret
what weapons were used to hit the important Russian planes.

Russian military correspondents are in shock about it and also can’t
figure out how the Ukrainians did it. Did they manage to increase the
distance of how far “Patriots” can hit? Or have they already got F-16’s and air-to-air missiles?

In any case, yesterday Russia skipped on their usual midnight ritual of
firing drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities.

Ukrainians could have a peaceful sleep with no air raid alerts.

Follow me for more updates!

37.7K views
View 1,074 upvotes
View 6 shares
1 of 7 answers
52 comments from
Ilona Chase
and more

What source?

Defense of Ukraine
@DefenceU
The Ukrainian Air Forces destroyed the enemy A-50 long-range radar
detection and control aircraft, worth $330 million, and the Il-22 enemy
air control center.
Great job, warriors!
Ukraine will win!


Andrej Mednansky
· 17h
dear Elena- that photo on the net of the damaged Il-22 id old from april
2022. Now shot Il-22 was lost on radar so probably it could lie on the
bottom of the sea.

Elena Gold
· 14h
Yes, I know it was an archive photo of Il-22. There is no confirmation
on it so far. Chatter is, it could have landed.

Michał Stępień
· 14h
that is another victory of sovietland. alongside lowering of soviet male population, soviets decided also to lower number of soviet avacs.

Elena Gold
· 18h
Archive video of the crew of A50.

Wiktor Kukułski
· 15h
I have doubts Ukraine can shot it, because range of Patriot PAC-2 is
150–160 km, and the point where planes were shot down is 250 km from
nearest point in unoccupied Ukrainian territory. The point where planes
were is far outside the circle, if coordinates in the OP article are
correct.
it could be viable, if mobile launchers moved to occupied territory to
make a shot
or somebody on the enemy territory is playing on Ukraine side

Elena Gold
· 14h
Ukrainians confirmed shooting A50.


Wiktor Kukułski
· 10h
if this is true, why Russia pushing version about friendly fire? they
afraid of spreading panic that Ukraine have ability to shoot planes on
such long range, so they’d better take blame on themselves ?


Alexei Sinitsa
· 10h
Good question. Friendly fire incident is something, that discipline and
being organised, in theory, can prevent from repeating.

Enemy having means to strike your rear lines is not something you can
prevent just with discipline.

If you try to cheer up surviving air crews, so they continue to go up
there, which of the two shootdown scenarios are you more likely to promote?

Wiktor Kukułski
· 9h
one possible explanation is that they claimed that airspace over Azov
sea is “safe”, and plane crews may refuse to fly there, if it is
reachable for Ukrainian missiles


Alexei Sinitsa
· 8h
Yes, you get the hint.

“Friendly fire incident” could be less demoralising explanation, in this situation…

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)