Ukrainian Armed Forces have successfully carried out an operation resulting in one A-50 airborne early warning and control system and one Il-22 airborne command center. While both are very important targets, the downing of the A-50 AEW&C system, if confirmed independently, is poised to become an unprecedented event in military history.
The information has been confirmed by Ukraine's top-level officials: the fruitful efforts of the Ukrainian Air Force were commended by the Air Force Command and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
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The statements provide an important clarification that both aircraft were "destroyed" because earlier information from unofficial sources, both Ukrainian and russian, suggested the Il-22 could manage to stay relatively airworthy and was trying to reach the airfield in Anapa, russia.
Defense Express assumes two explanations: either the previous information was false, or the aircraft did land but suffered damage too serious to be repaired.
Anyway, the downing of such aircraft is a significant success. For one, the russian invasion forces have lost one of their ten early warning aircraft overall (three A-50 and seven A-50U) and one of 12 Il-22M airborne command centers, according to The Military Balance 2023.
Apart from that, this is the first recorded time in history an AEW&C-type aircraft got taken down. Traditionally, such aircraft are kept at a safe distance from areas with active hostilities and potential enemy air defense systems; they are also escorted by fighters to protect from an enemy air attack.
The russians declare their A-50 can locate targets within a 400 km range. State media also reported it can guide surface-to-air missiles of S-400 systems toward their targets.
The range of weapons that could be used by Ukraine to take down such aircraft is limited. One option is a "wandering" Patriot, a risky operation involving deploying this anti-aircraft system in an area dangerously close to enemy positions in order to reach farther. If that was the case, Patriot's PAC-2 GEM-T missile could cover part of the Sea of Azov where the A-50 was downed.
Video, shared by the Commander-in-Chief of AFU Valerii Zaluzhnyi, regarding the downing of A-50 and Il-22M, delivered by InformNapalm:
The A-50 crew of 15–16 people, including 10–11 radar operators, most likely, saw the missile incoming on their screens but the bulky aircraft, configured based on the Soviet Il-76 jet, was physically incapable of effective evasive maneuvers.
Earlier, Ukrainian forces managed to only damage one of russian A-50U AEW&C systems in Belarus in February 2023. As for Il-22M, this is already the third destroyed aircraft of this type, preceded by one downed by the Ukrainian Air Force in April 2022 and by russians themselves in June 2023 during Prigozhin's mutiny.
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