Only one A-50 is missing and the entire Russian army is disorganized? Ukraine boasted on Monday (15 January) that it had managed to shoot down an A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft over the Sea of Azov. This success was presented as a major blow to the Russian army in general.
"We shot it down and it exploded in a perfectly conducted and organized operation in the Azov region," said Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "Burn in hell, you bastards!" said Mikola Oleshchuk, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, on Telegram to celebrate the "achievement".
For their part, the Russians have not confirmed this loss. "We don't have any information [on this]," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
Two planes hit
Some of the "milbloggers" - Russian military commentators often from the ultra-nationalist movement, who are very active on social networks - have however "taken this information on their own", notes Frank Ledwige, a specialist in air warfare issues at the University of Portsmouth.
Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, says Ukraine "destroyed" a Russian A-50 spy plane and Il-22 airborne command plane over the Sea of Azov.
The Kremlin says it has "no information" about the incident. pic.twitter.com/Fkn7DLPuEW
— max seddon (@maxseddon) January 15, 2024
This destruction of the A-50 seems all the more credible since Kiev announced at the same time that it had hit another aircraft - an IL-22, another aircraft acting as an airborne command center. "For the latter, images of the damaged aircraft have been posted, which suggests that Ukrainian air defenses have indeed hit important targets of the Russian Air Force," said Sim Tack, a military analyst for Force Analysis, a conflict monitoring firm.
The loss of an A-50 would be a "significant setback for the Russian military," said Jeff Hawn, an expert on Russian military issues and an outside consultant for the New Lines Institute, a U.S. geopolitical research center.
The aircraft represents "the spearhead of the Russian airborne defense system," Ledwig said. This imposing aircraft, easily recognizable thanks to the large disc-shaped radar attached to the top of the aircraft, allows the Russian air force to have "a very advanced early warning and guidance system", summarizes Sim Tack.
The A-50s play the role of both the sky watchdog par excellence and the air command center. "They are sometimes compared, a little hastily, to spy planes because they have the ability to see from very far away, more than most ground-based radars. But their function is not to ensure reconnaissance, but rather to coordinate the movements of the Russian air fleet and to warn bombers or fighters as quickly as possible when they are within range of enemy targets or anti-aircraft devices," explains Jeff Hawn.
Rare aircraft
These planes are all the more important to the Russian military because they are rare. "The Soviet Union built about 50 of them, but only about 10 have been improved since then," Hawn said.
Ukraine believes that Russia has only eight A-50s left to both cover its territory and help ensure Russian superiority in Ukrainian skies. Knowing that these planes cannot fly continuously and must take turns to ensure that nothing escapes Moscow's aerial eye, the loss of one of them "puts the Russian air force under pressure and can create a vacuum in the system," Ledwig said.
The destruction of one of these aircraft would also be a major human blow. "It carries a crew of about 15 people, generally very well trained, which will be difficult to replace," adds Frank Ledwige.
If the loss of an A-50 is confirmed, the Russian General Staff will have to understand how Ukraine managed to shoot down an aircraft that was supposed to be flying out of range of enemy fire. In this case, it was shot down north of the Sea of Azov, i.e. at the limit of the supposed range of Ukrainian air defenses.
"The plane was probably shot down with an American Patriot missile, because they are the only ones with such a range in the Ukrainian arsenal," Hawn said. But it will probably have been "necessary to move these weapons closer to the front line in order to be within range of the target, which is not without risk," says Sim Tack. Indeed, Kiev has a limited stock of Patriot missiles. By transporting them further to the combat zone, Ukraine was also exposing these valuable weapons to Russian strikes.
An impact on the course of the war?
The Ukrainian military must therefore have felt that destroying an A-50 was worth taking these risks. It is difficult to say, however, that such success can have a direct impact on the battlefield. Opinions differ on this point. For some, "even if Russia sends another A-50 to support the army in this area, they will probably position it a little further back, which should reduce the effectiveness of its surveillance and its ability to guide Russian bombers into enemy territory," Sim Tack said.
For other analysts, "this loss will mainly have an impact on the war in the air, but this air dimension does not play a crucial role in the conflict in Ukraine at the moment," said Frank Ledwige.
Nevertheless, such a success - if confirmed - will leave its mark. "It's a bit like when Ukraine manages to target the Russian fleet in the Black Sea," Ledwig said. Kiev is thus demonstrating its ability to strike targets that Russia may have believed to be under its control.
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