THAT'S DESPERATE SPECULATION > Ukrainian Sources We Just Shot Down Two Of Russia's Best Command Planes

  

Jan 14, 2024 #newsnbc #newstodayupdate #newstodayoncnn

Ukrainian air-defenses reportedly shot down two of the Russian air force’s rarest and most valuable command aircraft on Sunday: a Beriev A-50 radar early-warning plane and an Ilyushin Il-22 airborne command post.

• Ukrainian media has cited government officials confirming the purported shoot-downs, but there’s little hard evidence of the incidents.

Ukraine’s RBC Radio posted what it claimed was an audio recording of the Il-22’s crew radioing an S-O-S to controllers apparently in Anapa, on the Russian side of the Sea of Azov’s southern coast. “Urgently requesting ambulance and fire crew,” the crew radioed. It seems, at the very least, that the Il-22 suffered damage. According to Kyiv Independent, the four-engine, propeller-driven Il-22—which carries up to 10 people and helps to relay radio signals and coordinate front-line operations—was struck along the Sea of Azov coast Sunday night.
The Russian air force had just 30 Il-22s and variants after mutinous Wagner Group mercenaries shot down one of the pricey aircraft over western Russia in June. The Ilyushin command post is only slightly less rare than the Beriev early-warning plane is. The four-engine, jet-propelled A-50 is Russia’s answer to the United States’ own main early-warning plane, the Boeing E-3.

• The A-50’s top-mounted radome contains a rotating radar that scans 360 degrees, detecting aircraft as far away as 250 miles.

The 15-person crew of an A-50 tracks enemy planes and coordinates the flights of friendly planes. The Russian air force has just nine A-50Ms and upgraded A-50Us. Ukrainian forces, or their Belarusian agents, apparently damaged one of the A-50s at its base in Belarus back in February. Kyiv Independent claimed an A-50 was shot down “immediately after it went on duty in the Kyrylivka area of Zaporizhzhia” in southern Ukraine. The alleged shoot-down reportedly occurred just 10 minutes after the Il-22 got hit. If the Ukrainians indeed struck both the Il-22 and the A-50, Sunday would mark the single worst day for the Russian air force in the 23 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine. Worse than the day, back in December, when the Ukrainians shot down three Russian Sukhoi fighter-bombers in a complex missile-ambush over southern Ukraine.
If the shoot-downs did occur, it’s worth asking how. While Ukraine’s best air-defenses—its American-made Patriot PAC-2s—can hit aircraft from 90 miles away, A-50s and Il-22s normally should fly at the very edge of that range. It’s worth noting, however, that the command planes reportedly have struggled to overcome electromagnetic jamming. “Ukrainian forces have found [the] A-50 to be fairly easy to degrade via electronic attack,” Justin Bronk, Nick Reynolds and Jack Watling explained in a 2022 report for the Royal United Services Institute in London. Did the Russian command planes venture closer to the front line so their radars and radios might overpower the jamming? Maybe, but that’s speculation. All data is taken from the source: http://forbes.com Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe...