Ukraine shoots down yet another A-50

Ukrainian defense official Kyrylo Budanov said that the Russian military has only a handful of its prized A-50 spy planes left after recent losses. On February 23, the Ukrainian Air Force claimed that it had shot down an A-50U craft over the Sea of Azov near the city of Primorsko-Akhtarsk. Krasnodar's emergency authorities later said an aircraft had crashed near the Trudovaya Armenia village and a fire was later extinguished. This was reportedly the second one of the prized spy planes that Kyiv had claimed responsibility for destroying this year.

 
I'm reading that Ukrainian artillery fire has become sporadic or non-existent in parts of the front, due to lack of ammunition and because Republicans have essentially cut off military aid
 
Hawkeye10 said:
I reported on this days ago.
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A second A-50 plane was shot down. The Russians are not quite sure how these A-50 planes are being so accurately targeted far behind Russian lines, but it has got to have them scared. It appears that the Russian Air Force is having as bad of a time as the Russian Navy.
 
Cypress said:
I'm reading that Ukrainian artillery fire has become sporadic or non-existent in parts of the front, due to lack of ammunition and because Republicans have essentially cut off military aid
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That has recently turned around. The Czechs have found a million shells for the Ukrainians, and that has freed up Ukrainian stockpiles for immediate use. Assumably the shells that the Czechs have purchased are going to arrive soon and replace the stockpiles.

The Europeans say this is good practice for if trump is elected. trump could completely cut off money to Ukraine, and the Europeans could replace all the money (and more difficultly the weapons that money buys) by midway through 2025. That would leave some difficult months of half rations, but probably not collapse Ukraine.

There is one major problem with that plan. The USA has most of the targeting expertise, and equipment that Ukraine depends on. It costs the USA almost nothing to use, but it could be cutoff by trump. That would require a huge investment in things like satellites, and maybe a decade to replace.

trump may yet be able to save Putin.
 
Walt said:
A second A-50 plane was shot down. The Russians are not quite sure how these A-50 planes are being so accurately targeted far behind Russian lines, but it has got to have them scared. It appears that the Russian Air Force is having as bad of a time as the Russian Navy.
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You are such a liar....the Ukrainians have been lying their asses off about Russian Air Force losses.....just about nobody believes them anymore.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
You are such a liar....the Ukrainians have been lying their asses off about Russian Air Force losses.....just about nobody believes them anymore.
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Everyone agrees the two A-50s ceased to exist. It assumably happened by the Ukrainians shooting them down far behind Russian lines. Exactly how is not public. I nearly wrote no one knows, but obviously the Ukrainians and possibly others do know.

Denying this all just makes Hawkeye look stupid and desperate.
 
I need to point out that there has been some chatter on my grapevine that the A-50 mission might now be covered by just launched satellites. As well that there has never been any proof in evidence of the second A-50 being lost, the Russians have never admitted it, Russia is generally slaughtering the Ukrainians so there seems to be no problem, and as I said the Ukrainians have been recently even more than usual lying their asses off about Russian loses.
 
Walt said:
Everyone agrees the two A-50s ceased to exist. It assumably happened by the Ukrainians shooting them down far behind Russian lines. Exactly how is not public. I nearly wrote no one knows, but obviously the Ukrainians and possibly others do know.

Denying this all just makes Hawkeye look stupid and desperate.
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If you were telling the truth this would be proof that your information gathering network sucks....but you are a constant liar.
 
Walt said:
OK, you claim to have an amazing "grapevine", how did the two A-50s cease to exist?
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Hawkeye10 said:
Do know that I rarely read you...I dont waste time on known liars this late in life....I did not read this post.
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So you have no answer to why the two Russian A-50s ceased to exist.

Let's take a step back and see how many countries are at war with Russia... That would be one: Ukraine. Oddly enough, the two A-50s were in the Ukrainian theater of war. Odd how that works out? So it would not be unreasonable to assume the Ukrainians shot down the planes. It is possible that the two planes suddenly had accidents, or that it was sabotage, but shooting down is the best guess.

The A-50s by definition are kept way behind Russian lines. They would have had to be shot down way behind Russian lines.

Oddly enough, there are many other Russian planes suddenly exploding and ceasing to exist in the Ukrainian theater. While again, we do not definitely know that it is the Ukrainians, it almost certainly is. Either that or suddenly Russian pilots have become very suicidal.
 
ExpressLane said:
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The Russians had three serviceable A-50s. This was barely enough to provide total coverage of the Ukrainian theater, part of the time. They could not cover the Ukrainian theater all the time. Now two have suddenly ceased to exist while in the air. That leaves one serviceable A-50.

And the Russians have got to be wondering how the Ukrainians are getting A-50s to cease to exist. They have to be thinking about moving their one last A-50 out of the theater.

Ground radar, and satellites can do some of what the A-50 does, but it means that Russia will have incomplete air space intelligence. And it also presents the question over whether we can call Russia a superpower anymore. India has three times as many A-50s as Russia does, and even more similar Israeli planes. The USA has 31 times as many AWACS, with NATO and other allies having a similar number.
 
Walt said:
OK, you claim to have an amazing "grapevine", how did the two A-50s cease to exist?
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The Ukrainians have been destroying Russia's ground radar so Russia has been pushing their A 50's closer to the border to take up the slack. That makes the A 50 more vulnerable by putting them in range of Ukrainian missiles.
 
ExpressLane said:
The Ukrainians have been destroying Russia's ground radar so Russia has been pushing their A 50's closer to the border to take up the slack. That makes the A 50 more vulnerable by putting them in range of Ukrainian missiles.
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That is the most probable situation. It appears Ukraine knocked out ground based radars making it look like an attack was coming. The A-50 was rushed into the trap, and then was destroyed.

How does that happen twice? That is a serious question. You would think the Russians realizing they lost one out of three of their A-50s, would be very protective of there last two. For some reason, they appear to have fallen into a second trap.

What might have happened, and I am beyond speculating here, is the Russian thought losing the first A-50 was part of a plan that losing the ground radar was involved in. Ukraine has recently got some modern western planes, which could be devastating to the Russians (if the Ukrainians could knock out Russian air defense systems). So the Russians first see one of their A-50s go down, then lose a lot of ground based radar, and panic. They think this is the big attack, and put one of their two A-50s into the air space.

For that beyond speculation to be correct, Russians must think that Ukraine has the capability of having a major air strike, beyond taking out one or two planes every day.

Again, I do not have some secret fountain of knowledge.
 
And then there's the factory where the A-50's are built which has become a target and been hit as well

First, Ukraine Shoots Down Two of Russia’s A-50 Radar Planes. Then Russia Prepares A Replacement A-50. So Ukraine Targets Its Factory.

Some strike-planner in Kyiv surely is having a good laugh.

Mar 9, 2024,08:06pm EST

Russia went to war in Ukraine in February 2022 with no more than nine flyable Beriev A-50U/M radar planes, which extend sensor coverage over the front line.

The four-engine A-50s and the 10 or 15 experienced officers who crew each of them are critical and hard-to-replace assets. Which is why the Ukrainians have devoted scarce resources to finding and striking the $300-million planes.

A Ukrainian drone damaged an A-50 on the ground in Belarus last year. On Jan. 14, a long-range Ukrainian missile shot down an A-50 over the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine. Six weeks later on Feb. 23, another Ukrainian missile blew up a third A-50 in the same area.

The Russian air force swiftly grounded its surviving A-50s and scrambled to replace the two or three lost planes. That meant cycling at least one older and possibly unflyable A-50—out of several dozen Beriev built in the 1980s—through Beriev’s Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex in the Russian city of Taganrog, on the Azov Sea coast just 80 miles from the front line.

So of course the Ukrainians promptly droned the Taganrog factory. They obviously are determined to extinct the lumbering A-50 before the Russians can recover the species. The ostensible next-generation replacement for the A-50, the A-100, has been mired in testing for years and may never become a front-line aircraft.

It’s unclear exactly what happened in Taganrog and what the implications are. We know the Ukrainians targeted the Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex late Friday or early Saturday. We can surmise, from Russian reports, that it mostly was a drone assault.

Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight scrutinized satellite imagery to make sense of the chaos. The group focused on a building at the Beriev complex that it identified as the final-assembly facility for reconditioned A-50s and other large warplanes.

As recently as Feb. 29, an A-50 was parked outside the final-assembly shed. Perhaps the same repainted A-50 that Russian media recently heralded as proof that the Russian air force, despite the shoot-downs, still has plenty of the radar planes.

That same A-50 isn’t visible in the post-strike imagery. That could indicate that the plane was inside the assembly shed when the explosives-laden Ukrainian drones barreled in, inflicting visible damage on the shed’s roof.

“If the drones managed to penetrate the roof, the payload in the drones would be enough to cause damage to equipment and aircraft inside of the hangar,” Frontelligence explained. “However, there are no indications of a significant fire inside the hangar.”

In short, we can assume the Ukrainians at least came very close to damaging or destroying their fourth A-50 in two years—and their third in less than two months. And even if the drones missed, they sent a message to the Russian air force. Restore all the old A-50s you want. We’ll hunt them down, one by one.

Hilariously for friends of a free Ukraine, the Russian air force anticipated a Ukrainian strike on the Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex—and stationed a long-range surface-to-air missile battery adjacent to the complex.

It totally failed to prevent the overnight drone raid.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davida...e-replacement-at-its-factory/?sh=1096fb9245a1
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