The Russian Air Force Is Slowly Going Blind as Ukraine Blows Up Its A-50 Radar Planes

It's not for no reason the Ukrainians were able to shoot down an Su-35 fighter

It should shock no one that, on Saturday, the Russian air force lost a Sukhoi Su-35 fighter over Kursk Oblast in western Russia. It’s potentially the eighth Su-35 loss of the wider war.

The Russian air force isn’t exactly blind. But it’s getting blinder as Ukraine continues to whittle down the air force’s aerial radar coverage—by blowing up Beriev A-50 radar planes.

Initial reports that a Ukrainian Lockheed Martin F-16 shot down the Su-35 were apparently false. “According to updated information, the Su-35 fighter jet that took off from the Borisoglebsk air base was shot down by a surface-to-air missile system,” AviVector corrected.

In any event, the time and place of the shoot-down make sense. The Ukrainian air force has surged missile and planes into Kursk and Ukraine’s adjacent Sumy Oblast in an effort to halt a Russian offensive that’s threatening Sumy city and its quarter-million residents.

Of course the Russians have responded by sortieing their best fighters: the twin-engine, supersonic Su-35s.

The problem for the Russians is that the Su-35s may not enjoy the extended radar coverage normally provided by the four-engine, subsonic A-50s with their top-mounted radars.

The A-50 like the U.S. Air Force Boeing E-3 flies behind the front line in order to scan the horizon for enemy aircraft and missiles. Soaring high above the ground cover and capable of repositioning as needed, the A-50s have helped Russian commanders to keep an eye on the Ukrainian air force—and to detect, minutes in advance, incoming Ukrainian missiles and drones.

Early in the wider war, the 15-person A-50s “flew an average of two–three sorties per day, providing higher-resolution early-warning and vector information” in southern and eastern Ukraine, Justin Bronk, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds wrote in a November 2022 report for the Royal United Services Institute in London.

That was possible because the Russian air force had nine A-50s prior the wider Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2025. Now it has at most seven—and likely many fewer.

A Ukrainian drone damaged an A-50 on the ground in Belarus in February 2023. In January 2024, a long-range Ukrainian missile—reportedly a U.S.-made Patriot—shot down an A-50 over the Sea of Azov in southern Ukraine. Six weeks later in February 2024, another Ukrainian missile, an ex-Soviet S-200, struck a third A-50 in the same area.

A Beriev A-50. Russian defense ministry photo

Running low on Berievs

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 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 the following month.

The Kremlin reportedly canceled the effort to replace the A-50 with newer A-100 radar planes earlier this year. The upshot is that, by this spring, the Russian air force may have been down to six or fewer active A-50s—with no clear plan for complementing or replacing them.

And then, on June 1, Ukraine’s state security agency smuggled more than 100 short-range attack drones into Russia in modified truck trailers. The SBU’s drones targeted Dyagilevo, Ivanovo, Olenya, Belaya and Ukrainka air bases—respectively 310, 470, 1,200, 2,700 and 3,700 miles from Ukraine.

The drones meant for Ukrainka possibly never launched. It’s unclear whether the attack on Dyagilevo succeeded, but signs point to no. We have video of the attacks on Olenya and Belaya, as well as post-strike imagery of Belaya and Ivanovo—and it seems all three bases were hit.

The SBU claimed it damaged 41 Russian planes. The actual toll appears to be much lower, but still devastating to Russian air power.

At Belaya, the drones hit four propeller-driven Tu-95s and four jet-propelled Tu-22Ms. At Olenya, they struck three more Tu-95s and an Antonov An-12 transport. At Ivanovo, two non-flying Beriev A-50 radar planes ate quadcopters. If there was any damage at Dyagilevo and Ukrainka, it’s not yet evident.

Fourteen losses might not seem like a lot for an air force that, prior to Sunday, had 56 Tupolev Tu-22Ms, 47 Tu-95s,15 Tupolev Tu-160s, seven A-50s and 59 An-12s.

But the age of the bombers and radar planes—most are at least 30 years old—plus inadequate depot maintenance means that, in practice, just half or fewer of the “active” airframes are actually combat-ready, according to Tom Cooper, an independent aviation expert. Some sources claim just two or three A-50s are flyable.

The Kremlin needs three early-warning orbits in order to cover the entire 700-mile front line in Ukraine: one each in the south, east and north.

It takes at least nine A-50s to support three orbits: one plane is on station, another is returning to base and a third is in maintenance. In fact, the Russian air force would need additional jets to support crew training and to provide a float for periodic depot work.

It may yet be possible for the Russian air force to sustain a single A-50 orbit. But two is unlikely—and three is now impossible. With each A-50 the Ukrainians have destroyed, Russia’s aerial radar coverage over the front line has frayed.

Russian fighter pilots aren’t flying blind everywhere along the front line in Ukraine and western Russia. But with just one A-50 orbit to extend the fighters’ radar horizons, they are flying essentially blind somewhere.

If that somewhere happens to be Kursk, it may explain how that Ukrainian air-defense battery managed to shoot down that Russian Su-35. It’s possible the Russian pilot never saw the Ukrainian missile coming.

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