Another murder mystery for you from the land of blyat!
Russia's biggest air power loss of the war. Huge.
Once again, my plans for a more general update on the wars' progress are interrupted by breaking news from the front.
I had resolved to retire at a semi decent hour last night, even though for the moment, I am just trying to get over my most recent illness and didn't have any duties in the morning. Intriguingly, in his customary evening address, Zelensky had said that Ukraine that preparing to announce “good news” about air-defense systems. In retrospect, this seemed to be cheeky foreshadowing.
Just as I was about to log off of everything for the night though, word came through that Ukraine had shot down two vital Russian aircraft, in an improbable location. Early reports had the Ilyushin Il-22M command and control aircraft as possibly having survived the attack, while things were looking grim for the big Beriev A-50, AWACS type aircraft.
And this modern looking piece of kit is an Il-22:
Either one of these losses would've been quite bad for the Russians. The shoot downs taking place over the Sea of Azov, far from the frontline, were not only baffling to everyone, but also bode very ill for continued Russian air activity, even this far back from the "zero line". We almost immediately knew the Il-22 had definitely been struck by something, as very quickly the whole internet had radio intercepts of them declaring an in-flight emergency over an open, unencrypted radio channel, with casualties onboard, and requesting an ambulance and "firefighting services” to meet them at the nearest airfield. For the big Beriev, all we had initially was a few Ukrainian sources saying it had been shot down.
The A-50 having crashed is a very bad thing for Russia. Its role is advanced warning and control system. That's where the acronym 'AWACS' comes from. The US and western allies rely heavily on such aircraft to assert and maintain air superiority, from the little twin-engined E-2 Hawkeyes flying from aircraft carriers, to the big E-3 Sentry, still flying on the venerable old Boeing 707 platform. They don't make them like that anymore.
On paper, you might see that Beriev manufactured 40 of the A-50's, but most of those are mothballed or scrapped, ancient analog aircraft. Russia reportedly operated only ten of the A-50U, the upgraded, modernized type of this aircraft as of the beginning of last year, although only eight have been confirmed as delivered. This handful of early warning and command and control aircraft are all Russia has to guard its vast territories, the largest nation on earth, with perceived enemies on the multiple continents it spans.
This type of aircraft made it into the news last year as the victim of a daring raid by Ukrainian spies, deep behind Russian lines. The Ukrainian or allied Belarusian dissident saboteurs were able to sneak close to a Russian airbase where these valuable aircraft were operating from, far from Ukraine, and fly a drone over the Russian flightline. They cheekily took a photograph of the drone landing on top of the rotodome (rotating radar dome) as proof, then set off the explosive charges the drone was carrying, crippling the aircraft. Carrying the big radar high aloft is the main purpose of the aircraft, from altitude it can not only look down and spot aircraft trying to sneak along the nap of the earth, but it can also see much further than ground radars, effectively over the horizon for them and guide ground missile batteries in attacks to further ranges than they would normally be capable of.
Russia's current ability to repair such high-tech equipment, much of it not manufactured since the Soviet era, is very questionable at best, and Russian quality control is highly dubious, it seems likely that this plane may never operate again, and if it does, it will be a long time before it is rebuilt. I think Beriev may have been continuing slow rate production of the upgraded A-50U model even as late as into last year, but that should be getting nearly impossible to continue given Russia's inability to produce many of the components, especially electronics needed, and the ever-tightening effects of sanctions.
Which brings us to Russia's latest loss of a Beriev A-50U. This one wasn't attacked on the ground, like the one attacked by a drone, it had at least 15 highly trained aircrew on-board, from pilots, to radar operators, to command staff. If Russia even has any remaining base model A-50's sitting around somewhere that haven't been scrapped, it will struggle mightily to convert another one up to A-50U standard given sanctions and the mafia states general inability to manufacture anything complex. Don't think that any of the old airframes would have any utility in their current configuration either, not only is it extremely likely they've been looted of any components that could be sold, and their ancient analog technology is of dubious value at best, but Russian storage techniques leave more than a little something to be desired. What isn't decayed, rusted, or moisture damaged, has most likely been stolen and sold, just like thieves stole electronic equipment out of Putin's "doomsday" Il-80 flying headquarters. If they can't even protect that rare asset, arguably the most important in the whole air force, what are the chances that the old A-50's put out to pasture are remotely salvageable given what we know of Russian storage and preservation techniques and endemic thieving and looting?
The situation with the Il-22M is rather similar. There's a handful more of those operating than the maybe only six or eight A-50's, of which only half at most are likely airworthy at any given time, but the Ilyushin fleet can ill afford the loss either (intended). Worse, it is more purely a command-and-control aircraft, lacking the giant radar and radar operators of the A-50, instead filled with specialists in electronic warfare, radio intercepts, and command staff. One of its purposes is to serve as a flying command post. Something Russia is in dire need of right now, since they keep losing ground-based command posts to long range Ukrainian missiles. On January 5th, Ukraine hit yet another headquarters, this time in Crimea. Several high-ranking officers have been confirmed as killed in the attack, and rumors still are swirling that general Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence, was visiting the location at the time, and was also killed. Despite these rumors, he has yet to appear in public since that time, and has missed several high profile events one would have expected him to attend.
One of the mysteries of this incident is whether or not the Ilyushin aircraft survived. The two irreplaceable command and control aircraft were being escorted by only a single Sukhoi Su-30 fighter, which "...detected a fire and the descent of an unidentified airborne vehicle”. It is hard to tell if the Sukhoi's crew saw a fire in the air on the water, but it seems clear that at least one Russian aircraft went in the drink, and this has generally been reported as being the Beriev A-50. The Russians do lament that they lost all radio contact with the A-50 at this time, making it seem likely it crashed into the sea after some sort of attack against it.
The Ilyushin also disappeared from everyone's radar as well, although for a time, it was in radio contact with an airfield not far away. The Russians are doggedly saying that although two crewmen were wounded, it limped back to an airbase and survived the attack. Given that some modern anti-aircraft missiles explode in a cloud of shrapnel when near their targets, this is plausible, especially with a four-engined turboprop aircraft. It is difficult for me to parse the radar logs released by the Ukrainian government with their statement that they shot down the aircraft. This story is still developing as well, as I was writing this up, an image surfaced of an Il-22 with a very shrapnel riddled tail. Although, I seem to recall a very similar image from one of Ukraine's many attacks against Russian airbases this past year, and some are questioning if this is the correct model of Il-22 as well. It's quite possible this is more Russian "cope" and disinformation. That particular mystery I will leave until later to solve, but include the photo making the rounds below.
Short video of radar log:
The biggest mystery about this whole incident is what attacked the Russian aircraft? This, and excitement about this victory over our vile enemy, and research, kept me up for several hours past when I planned on going to sleep last night. Part of the time I spent trading theories with some like-minded folks from all over the world on a small Ukraine-supporting Discord server, and I also gathered some other theories from around the web as well. I'll share many of them below with you, interspersed with some of the many amusing memes that immediately sprouted up around this latest Russian defeat.
Predictably, although still odd to most of us, the Russians immediately claimed incompetence rather than credit Ukrainian skill or arms, or western weapons with having bested them, and stated that the Ilyushin had been hit by "friendly fire" but had made it back to base. They were completely silent about the A-50, neither stating that they accidentally shot it too, nor admitting that it had been hit. To many, Russian friendly fire seemed the most plausible explanation, as at first glance, it appeared that where the aircraft were shot down was too far away for any weapons system known to be in Ukrainian hands to have achieved these hits. Reports came in that the Kerch strait bridge had been shut down for some unspecified reason just prior to the aircraft being hit increased the possibilities that Russian air defense gunners would be extra trigger happy and maybe not too careful in their target selection once again. Although, information was preliminary, and at first as far as location went for the incident, all we knew was "over the Sea of Azov". Given that the Russians had just badly damaged one of their most advanced aircraft, a Su-35 fighter over Crimea less than two weeks previously, it was hard to rule out friendly fire, even if it seemed really stupid for them to be shooting at aircraft operating at high altitude over the Sea of Azov. That just isn't a flight profile a Ukrainian aircraft would have.
Speaking of flight profiles, interestingly, NASA's old LANDSAT program is still paying dividends. This had noticed that Russian aircraft flying the "racetrack" patterns electronic intelligence aircraft typically fly in were leaving contrails above the sea, quite near the northern coast. The Russian aircraft were shot down promptly as the A-50 arrived on-station about 9:PM, and the satellite photos were taken in daytime, but clearly the Russians had formed a habit of always flying in the same area. Not a good idea. Later, the radar tracks made public by Ukraine would indeed show the night shift flying the same racetrack patterns right over the same area near the northern coast of Crimea.
Amongst those of us following this war intently for one reason or another, calipers came out and various authorities were consulted and referenced far and wide trying to determine what kind of weapons systems might have been in range for Ukraine to have achieved this. Alongside this was wild speculation some of us engaged in for fun, and some of us also engaged in just to address every possibility (as well as the fun), even if just to discount each possibility in the end.
One of the first theories was partisans or Ukrainian military intelligence agents or commandos using MANPADS from Crimea, or elsewhere behind Russian lines. MANPADS are man-portable shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles. Stingers and Iglas mostly. Quickly we determined that they were too short-ranged to achieve this, particularly since the A-50 probably is operating at a pretty high altitude to get the most range out of its big radar.
Discussion covered the possibility of naval drones similar to the type Ukraine has been using successfully against the Russian Black Sea Fleet could now be carrying anti-aircraft missiles. Not as far-fetched as one might think. Naval drones had made it as far as the Kerch Strait bridge at least once before, striking support columns for the bridge, and now some Ukrainian naval drones are sporting a small battery of anti-personnel missiles to suppress the crews on the decks of Russian ships trying to shoot the drones on their final runs.
Some napkin math and reasoning told us it was very unlikely that naval drones were the source of the missiles that took out the Russian aircraft though. What drones we know of are too small to carry a surface-to-air missile big enough to bring down these aircraft at altitude, but the fact that the possibility that such a thing could be produced in this day and age was intriguing and bodes ill for the future. And not just for militaries, already Mexican cartels operate submarines, and have been using drones to bomb their rivals and terrorize civilians for some time.
Some parts of the internet speculated that perhaps a collision between the two command and control aircraft had brought down the Beriev and damaged the Ilyushin. Plausible, but there wouldn't be any good reason for them to be flying that close together, particularly at night, and Ukraine was claiming these as "shoot downs". Lots of people were trying to say Ukraine was trying for a propaganda victory and this was untrue, but almost always, Ukraine's knowledge that "truth will out" and the nature of information sharing in our current world means that Ukraine doesn't say things like this that aren't true, so I discounted the collision theory, even though given Russian incompetence and rampant drunkenness, it wasn't outside the realm of possibility.
Likewise, bird strikes were brought up. A surprising number of aircraft every year, all around the world, are damaged and sometimes brought down, by running into big birds, or flocks of birds. Even a twin-engined civilian airliner can go down this way if both its jet engines ingest some birds. Two aircraft running into birds, two aircraft that were both likely operating at high altitudes, over a sea, at night, and one of the aircraft was a propeller powered one that had a couple of injured crewmen onboard, seemed highly unlikely too me.
I wondered if somehow a Ukrainian pilot hadn't snuck forward close enough to target them with the shorter range air-to-air missiles they are still hobbled with after nearly two years of warfare, but this seemed unlikely. The Berievs giant radar, looking down from height as it was, should see anything, even an aircraft trying to sneak through the hilly terrain of southern Crimea.
Speculation then turned to the Russians having turned their radar off. Initial reports were that the stricken A-50 was going off-station, and it'd be just like the Russians to declare the day done and shut down all their equipment, leaving themselves blind to incoming missiles. In fact, given the Russians penchant for always doing things the same way, I speculated that it was likely that our electronic intelligence had picked up on this habit of theirs, and planned a mission to capitalize it. That would require another AWACS aircraft not coming on-station to relieve the departing one though, and later we learned that the Beriev had been hit just as it was arriving for duty.
This line of reasoning led me to wonder if the radar just wasn't functional. Amazingly, hacking provided us with the fitness reports of the Russians Black Sea Fleet flagship the Moskva from two weeks before the war. One of her main roles was air defense for the rest of the fleet, and yet most of her radars and most of her anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems were not only broken, but it was noted in the report that this was the normal state of affairs, some of them being poorly designed and they just didn't really work ever, and others perpetually lacking spare parts. Given this kind of professionalism, I figured it wouldn't be surprising at all to learn that the Russians airborne radar plane had taken off without a functioning radar. At least somebody got to check a box saying that they sent the plane aloft right? "Boss said fly this mission". Our radar track of their flight seems to show the A-50 either fleeing the missile, or heading for the same airfield at Anapa that the damaged Ilyushin was making for, but if it was the former, and they saw the missile coming for them and turned away, clearly their radar was functioning.
There was speculation all over the internet about new weapons systems being secretly tested by the Ukrainians. Whether the surprise debut of F-16's in Ukrainian hands launching the still in development AIM-260 missiles or any number of known and unknown weapons systems, these are not implausible theories either, although I think them unlikely. The western allies and in particular the United States are reticent to allow the possibility of our most advanced technologies falling into Russian, then Chinese hands. This is why Ukraine is kicking Russia's ass with the stuff out of the back of our warehouses that for the most part is forty or more years old.
Some suggested a maintenance failure caused the aircraft to come down. If it had only been one plane, I'd consider this highly likely. Russian planes fall out of the sky all the time. They have a severe shortage of trained aircraft mechanics, and the ones they do have are hampered by a lack of spare parts, various other lacks of support, and often a total lack of caring about their work, and it isn't uncommon for them to be drunk. It's hard to understate the amount of perpetual drunkenness in Russia, it's kind of inconceivable to westerners. Again, with two aircraft going down at once, I think it unlikely that poorly done maintenance, or a lack of necessary maintenance caused the loss of these aircraft.
This line of reasoning made me consider sabotage though. It isn't beyond the realm of possibility that Ukrainian agents had bombs placed aboard the aircraft, whether they did so themselves or bribed Russian ground crew to do so. Two aircraft both having bombs go off at nearly the same time would throw the scent off of pursuing this line of attack and place assumption on it having somehow been missiles. As sloppy as Russian airfield security is, and it's REALLY sloppy, as there have been numerous instances of breaches of Russian airbases from Belarus to Siberia resulting in damaged and destroyed aircraft, I would expect that the highly valuable command and control aircraft would have another layer of security around them, likely preventing bombs being smuggled aboard them. Nonetheless, this is still a fully plausible explanation for these two aircraft being struck.
In the end though, once we got what appears to be the locations of where the aircraft were damaged at, it appears possible that the longer ranged PATRIOT PAC-2 missiles might just have been capable of reaching the Russian aircraft. There are a number of interesting things about this. First of all, Ukraine has been prosecuting a campaign against Russian air defense units for some time now, almost every day several Russian missile-launching, or radar carrying vehicles, or other components of air defense systems are destroyed. This has extended even to seaborne commando raids onto the Crimean peninsula to blow up Russian radar stations.
This steady attrition of Russian air defense units has badly depleted Russian air defenses, particularly through Crimea, but also all along the front and in fact the entire Russian army, Russia's frontiers away from Ukraine are naked. Speculation has long been that Ukraine is doing this to pave the way for the eventual arrival of F-16 fighters to be used more effectively, but the F-16's can carry radar homing HARM-88 missiles, and take out any air defense unit that tries to knock them down. I feel the Ukrainian campaign to destroy Russian air defenses is more wholistic and is intended to reap a variety of benefits. Right now, it would appear that one of the benefits was drawing Russian command and control aircraft so far forward, in an attempt to cover the loss of their forward deployed radars, that they were vulnerable to some sort of weapon system Ukraine has, likely a Patriot missile.
Ukraine has had Patriot launchers for a little while now. But while America sits on a whopping 480 Patriot batteries, most in storage, Ukraine has only received three, two of those from Germany, one of those only arriving recently. In order to adequately cover just Kyiv, Ukraine's; capital, economic heart, and home to 3 million people, Ukraine needs to keep two Patriot batteries stationed near there. Once, last May, they slipped one, or part of one battery, up close to the front line and took down a half dozen Russian aircraft in a very short time, causing Russia to curtail aerial attacks on the front-line area for a time.
When Ukraine was unable to repeat this feat, due to the Patriot battery having to stay near Kyiv, Russian again returned to its tactics of pounding the frontline areas with their aircraft. This is when they really started using the big glide bombs a lot, both against civilian areas near the frontline, but largely to continuously pummel the small Ukrainian bridgehead across the Dnipro River, doggedly held by a mere 300 Ukrainians against endless attacks from Russian ground forces.
When Germany delivered Ukraine's third Patriot battery recently, Ukraine quickly snuck it right up to the frontline, and in quick succession shot down three of the "Death Ducks", Su-34 fighter-bombers used to lob the glide bombs at Ukraine. This stunning setback, and the knowledge that there was now another Patriot battery in Ukraine, and given its mobility, that it could be anywhere, caused the Russians to almost entirely cease these devasting large bombing attacks along the frontline areas.
One of the interesting things about the Patriot batteries, is although in their entirety, they consist of eight separate missile launcher vehicles, as well as a radar vehicle, and a command vehicle, they can operate with as few as a single missile launcher. In fact, due to NATO interoperability, a single Patriot launcher could actually receive targeting data from an entirely different radar system. This means that it doesn't necessarily require finding places near the frontline to hide all eight launchers, the command vehicle, the radar vehicle, and the other support vehicles that a full Patriot battery consists of. In defense, it is best to have all that together, but for an ambush of enemy aircraft, you can sometimes get away with sending just a launcher, and maybe a radar and the command vehicle up close to the frontline, take out some enemy aircraft and drive away.
Whether they used the whole battery or the tactic I described above, three times now in less than a year Ukraine appears to have moved Patriots up close to the frontline, where many said they'd never risk them, to inflict terrible losses on the Russian air force. Each time this has resulted in a pullback of the zone of Russian aviation operations. I imagine we will see the same in the wake of this incident with Russian command and control aircraft. Given the concurrent losses of ground radars, Russia is not only losing air supremacy along the frontline, but they are losing their "eyes" to see what is coming at them, and with the heavy losses of ground based launchers and the evolving threat environment for their aircraft, they are losing the ability to respond to Ukrainian air operations over the front line and into Russian rear areas.
Ukraine has accomplished this with only three Patriot batteries. While I wrote this piece, two air raid alerts sounded in Mykoliav. While hundreds of Patriot missile batteries sit unused in the U.S. and given the strength of the United States Air Force, almost all of them will never see any use in American hands, Ukraine can only effectively defend Kyiv right now. The Russians have spent months probing our air defenses with constant attacks with both Shaheds and cruise missiles, and have finally started acting on the information they have gained from that. The last few air raids against Ukraine avoided Kyiv entirely and attacked the vulnerable rest of the country, where millions of us lack any effective air defenses and every day civilians die because of this.
We wonder why our allies don't give us the tools we need to defend the people of Ukraine against genocidal attacks and why our allies aren't giving us the tools we need to win this war.
It's been almost two years. This is shameful.
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Thanks for the update. All glory to Ukraine and shame on our incompetent illiterate RethuglicKKKan politicians.