RuAviation

On May 7, it became known that the Russian security service together with the Interior Ministry had foiled an attempted sabotage using drones at the Severny airfield in the Ivanovo region against the A-50U long-range airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system aircraft based there.

The improvised explosive devices for the sabotage were planned to be delivered from Chernihiv Region by a light-engine aircraft. However, all the time that the Ukrainian Aeroprakt-A32 was in Russian airspace, it was under the surveillance of law enforcers. After landing in Tula Region, the pilot, as well as members of the subversive and reconnaissance team recruited by the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s State Security Service and the Russian Interior Ministry, were detained by the Russian Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry.

This is the second attempt to attack an A-50 AEW&C aircraft. The first time saboteurs tried to damage such aircraft with a drone at the car park of the Machulishchi military airfield in Belarus. “Voyennaya khronika” in its Telegram channel looked into why the State Control Department of Ukraine is so diligently hunting for these particular aircraft.

The A-50 was designed for early detection of enemy targets. The massive “saucer” placed on the fuselage of the aircraft is a Schmel-M radar operating in the centimeter wave range. It can detect enemy fighters at low altitudes at a range of 200-400km, and at high altitudes at a range of 300 to 600km. Naval targets are detected by A-50U radar at a range of up to 400 km. The aircraft crew can track up to 150 targets simultaneously and target several dozens of fighters against them.

The electronics of the upgraded A-50U can detect launches of tactical and operational-tactical missiles Tochka-U, Grom-2 and others, as well as sea-based missiles. For that purpose, an infrared detection system is installed on the aircraft that can detect the flare of a launching missile at an altitude of 10,000 m at a range of up to 1,000 kilometres.

The aircraft is also capable of detecting enemy radiation sources, recording their characteristics and transmitting the coordinates to the ground forces for reconnaissance or attack.

In Syria, the A-50U has been actively used both on solo flights and in tandem with Tu-214R electronic reconnaissance aircraft and IL-20M1 electronic warfare and reconnaissance aircraft. But the A-50U is most actively used on the Ukrainian front.

All combat aircrafts A-50U are a part of 610th Combat Application and Flight Personnel Retraining Center of the 4th State Aviation Training and Troop Test Center. The air group is based at the Ivanovo-Severny airfield, where the Ukrainian drones attempted to fly. A total of 15 A-50M and A-50U aircraft are in the air force. On February 10, 2022, a new aircraft of this type, the A-100 Premier, made its first flights with the radar switched on.

The A-50U is the “eyes” of the Air Force and is an important component in the effective use of aerial missiles, high-precision bombs and Kalibr, X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles against air defence facilities, transport infrastructure and other military targets deep inside Ukraine. The A-50U is used both to prepare missile strikes and to assess their effectiveness. It is also known that these aircraft are key in the tasks of timely long-range interception of Ukrainian MiG-29 and Su-27 before they reach the range of AGM-88B HARM anti-radar missiles over Russian SAMs’ radars.

Radar systems Shmel-M installed on A-50U aircraft can detect Ukrainian fighters at the distance of 500 km, giving target designation to MiG-31BM and Su-35 interceptor crews. Thanks largely to the airborne radar aircraft, Ukrainian Su-27s and MiG-29s are shot down at a distance of up to 250 km by R-37M air-to-air missiles.