A Russian air force A-50U.
Wikimedia Commons
Pro-Ukraine Belarusian insurgents reportedly infiltrated an air base in Belarus and sabotaged a Russian air force Beriev A-50M airborne early-warning plane.
The claim, widely repeated by news outlets on Sunday and Monday, is difficult to verify.
But it makes sense. Pro-Ukraine fighters should be highly motivated to hit Russia’s AEW planes, wherever and whenever possible. The A-50s are few in number but play an outsize role in Russia’s brutal, terroristic air war over Ukraine.
Belarus is an ally of Russia, but a restive one. Many Belarusians not only oppose Russia, they also oppose their own country’s authoritarian regime.
The Association of Security Forces of Belarus, known by its Belarusian acronym BYPOL, is a resistance group made up of former Belrusian law-enforcement officials.
On Sunday, BYPOL claimed someone had blown up an A-50 at Machulishchi air base, 150 miles north of the Belarus-Ukraine border. “As a result of two explosions … the front and central parts of the aircraft were damaged, the avionics and the radar antenna were damaged.”
“The plane was seriously damaged and won’t fly anywhere soon,” BYPOL added.
Overhead satellite imagery might eventually confirm the attack. In the meantime, recall that pro-Ukraine insurgents have proved they can raid air bases even farther from the Ukrainian border than Machulishchi is.
Back in October, saboteurs purportedly blew up at least one, and as many as four, Russian air force attack helicopters at an air base in Russia, 500 miles from the border. There’s actual video evidence of that raid.
The four-engine, jet-propelled A-50 is Russia’s answer to the United States’ own main AEW plane, the 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 also coordinates the flights of friendly planes.
The Russian air force has just nine A-50Ms and upgraded A-50Us as well as 14 propeller-driven Ilyushin Il-20s that also can function as airborne command posts. The lumbering A-50s routinely stage from Belarus and, apparently, southern Russia respectively for sorties near eastern and southern Ukraine.
When Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022, the A-50s “flew an average of two [to] three sorties per day, providing higher-resolution early warning and vector information on low-flying Ukrainian aircraft in those sectors,” Justin Bronk, Nick Reynolds and Jack Watling wrote in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Tracks from the A-50s could help the Russian air force’s interceptors—Mikoyan MiG-31s and Sukhoi Su-35s—to lob super-long-range air-to-air missiles at Ukrainian warplanes. A tactic against which the Ukrainians have few defenses.
The Ukrainians have nothing like the A-50—and no easy way to counter the type while it’s airborne. Ukrainian air force interceptors can’t safely range over Russian territory, and the air force decommissiond its last, long-range S-200 surface-to-air missile batteries back in 2013.
To be fair, the A-50’s radar reportedly is susceptible to jamming. “Ukrainian forces have found [the] A-50 to be fairly easy to degrade via electronic attack, and report consistent success in doing so,” Bronk, Reynolds and Watling explained.
Sometimes the Russians do the Ukrainians a favor and themselves degrade their A-50s. “Because the Russian air operation is subordinated to the ground forces, surveillance information is not typically relayed directly between A-50M and fighters,” the RUSIA analysts found.
“Instead, information is normally relayed via the military district command post or a combined arms army command post, then either directly or via an Il-20M relay aircraft. … This significantly slows the rate of data transfer.”
But to physically damage or even destroy an A-50, it might be easiest to catch the plane on the ground, as the Belarusians claim they did on Sunday. “The incident occurred while a snowplow was working near the aircraft,” BYPOL reported.
“Probably, as has happened more than once at Russian military facilities, someone again did not comply with fire safety measures and smoked near the side,” the resistance group quipped.
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Russia recently came under fire after it was reported that one of the nine military A-50 radar planes in their arsenal had been destroyed in an explosion at a Belarusian air base. Insurgents have alleged that someone managed to sneak into the air base and plant an explosive device, while Russia has been quick to dismiss the claims.
The A-50 is a surveillance plane that uses radar to detect airborne threats, as well as serving as guidance systems for air-to-ground missiles. The planes are a crucial part of Russia’s military capability and losing one creates a significant loss for their defence programme. It is unsure how long the repairs to the other eight planes will take, or what the ramifications of this incident are overall.
Russia has denied any involvement in the alleged incident and instead accused the insurgents of fabricating stories about the incident. There has been some speculation that this could be a cover-up for some activities that Russia wished to keep out of the public eye, but so far there is no evidence to support this.
The Belarusian government has also denied the claims made by the insurgents and is currently conducting an investigation into the claims. Whilst the results of the investigation remain to be seen, it is clear that the incident has laid bare the vulnerabilities of the A-50 planes and the lack of security at air bases – something that needs to be addressed if Russia is to retain its air supremacy.
In conclusion, it remains to be seen what exactly happened at the Belarusian airbase and who is responsible for the destruction of one of Russia’s A-50 radar planes. In the meantime, however, it is essential that the security of Russia’s air bases is improved so as to ensure no further incidents occur.
