Forbes: Russian A-50 And Il-22 Were Trapped

The Ukrainian forces conducted a complex operation to shoot down unique aircraft.

On January 14, Ukraine shot down one of the very rare and very valuable A-50 airborne early warning aircraft of the Russian Air Force. As a result of the same attack, the Russian Il-22 command aircraft was damaged.

According to Forbes, it is not yet clear how exactly the plane was shot down, but, according to analyst Tom Cooper, Ukrainian radar and rocket crews lured the Russian crews into a trap.

It is noted that on Saturday, Ukrainian Air Force aircraft struck Russian facilities in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. As a result, Cooper notes, several radars were disabled.

“The Saturday strikes, the latest in a long campaign of Ukrainian raids on Russian defences in Crimea, suppressed the Russians’ ground-based radar coverage, leaving the surviving missile batteries on the peninsula partially blind - especially to the north, where the terrain could mask incoming Ukrainian planes, drones and missiles. So Russian commanders did the obvious, but stupid, thing. They ordered one of their few remaining A-50U radar planes, which normally fly far to the south over the Sea of Azov, to push farther north to extend radar coverage over most of Crimea,” Forbes writes.

Satellite imagery and radar data seem to place the A-50’s northernmost flight path over occupied Berdyansk, just 75 miles from the front line. This is within the reach of the Patriot air defence system.

“All Ukrainians had to do was to secretly deploy a suitable SAM system to target the two aircraft from long range,” Cooper writes.

"Perhaps this was one of the S-300 SAM systems. Perhaps one of the PAC-2/3 SAM systems. It is also possible that Ukrainians have deployed a launcher and radar, plus power-supply equipment, from one of their three PAC-2/3 SAM systems... in combination with one of their S-300 radars. ”

According to the article, there’s some evidence of an S-300-Patriot team-up. A Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber reportedly detected a previously unknown Ukrainian S-300 battery switching on its radar in the minutes before the A-50 and Il-22 were hit.

If the S-300 battery did the initial illumination, it must have passed along target tracks to a nearby hidden Patriot battery.

“The latter powered up its radar for only a few seconds: long enough to obtain its own targeting data, but too short for the Russians to dependably detect its emissions and assess them as a threat,” Cooper suggested.

And then the Ukrainians began to launch missiles, destroying the A-50 and damaging the Il-22.

After the fire impact, the crews of the Ukrainian S-300 and PAC-2/3 crews promptly ceased emitting, and started packing their systems to move them away and thus avoid any possible Russian retaliation, the expert noted.

Recall that on January 14, in the area of the Sea of Azov, the Ukrainian military destroyed the Russian A-50 aircraft. The next day, its defeat was confirmed by the Ukrainian military command. There were also reports of a strike on the Il-22.

According to Russian millbloggers, as a result of the elimination of the A-50 aircraft, 11 or 12 military pilots could have died.