Not surprised, these things seem like big targets. All while our radar planes are nice and safe while still spying on the Russians and feeding info to the Ukrainians.
>Russian air ops “are constrained by the availability of pilots with sufficient experience to carry out key missions”
That’s not dissimilar to the situation the Luftwaffe were in in early 1944. They had planes, but not enough experienced pilots due to fuel shortages. I’m assuming Russia isn’t short on fuel right now.
“On Sunday night, Ukrainian air-defenses shot down one of the Russian air force’s very rare, and very valuable, A-50 radar early-warning planes, likely killing all 15 people aboard—potentially including high-ranking officers. A Russian Ilyushin Il-22 command plane was damaged in the same attack.”
Seems like the early warning planes are going to need early warning planes of their own.
Yuri, you lost another AWCS!?!?!!!!!
Didn’t they only have two of these serviceable anyway?
>The location of the crash, at least 120 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine, could indicate the four-engine, 15-person radar plane either suffered a mechanical failure—or took a hit while operating closer to the front and tried to make it back to its base in Krasnodar before exploding.
There’s no MANPADs operating in occupied territory? Seems it would be incredibly easy for a resistance force to just sit out somewhere under a flight path in the middle of nowhere then get out of ddge.
How is it that the Russians don’t or can’t defend these behemoths?
*That*’s a shame.
Russia can’t have nice things. $330 million per aircraft. That would have been lots of schools..
.. wait schools would be dangerous to a dictator.
I bet they didn’t see that coming.
As Ukrainian Air Force masterfully put on twitter “Chipi chipi chapa chapa 🫡🇺🇦”
Did it fly off the radar?
great news!
Russia running low on Russian War Ships that can go fuck themselves has begun vigorously fucking their Russian War Planes.
Even if it’s a no-fly zone, Russia will still fly over and will not give a fuck
is this winning, but in russian?
I’m sure it fell out of a window somewhere
They also can’t fly at night!
What they’re short of is airframe hours. Basically, all airplanes have a max number of hours they can fly before the structure is considered compromised from stress and no longer airworthy. This is especially true for high-G fighter jets.
By far the vast majority of airframes in the RuAF were built before 1991 and are approaching end of life and they struggle mightily to build new even their legacy designs. So their pilots never get enough flight hours to actually be combat effective for fear of wearing out the planes.
If only they had a radar-plane to find it.
Or maybe an AirTag? I’m sure there’s a military version for around 5million…
Tic-toc
We appreciate your candor in the matter.
Some unconfirmed rumors about another SU-34 shot down. And some even claim another plane has been hit.
Really Dmitri? You’ve lost another A-50?
“Andrei, you’ve lost another submarine?”
Da, oligarchs need fuels for yachts not flight practices.
How could you lose it, its not a set of car keys. It’s not like it’s incon-fucking-spicuous.
AWACs are actually ludicrously expensive, so this is pretty devastating. That’s about a half billion dollar asset going down, everytime one gets shot down
30 comments
Not surprised, these things seem like big targets. All while our radar planes are nice and safe while still spying on the Russians and feeding info to the Ukrainians.
>Russian air ops “are constrained by the availability of pilots with sufficient experience to carry out key missions”
That’s not dissimilar to the situation the Luftwaffe were in in early 1944. They had planes, but not enough experienced pilots due to fuel shortages. I’m assuming Russia isn’t short on fuel right now.
“On Sunday night, Ukrainian air-defenses shot down one of the Russian air force’s very rare, and very valuable, A-50 radar early-warning planes, likely killing all 15 people aboard—potentially including high-ranking officers. A Russian Ilyushin Il-22 command plane was damaged in the same attack.”
Seems like the early warning planes are going to need early warning planes of their own.
Yuri, you lost another AWCS!?!?!!!!!
Didn’t they only have two of these serviceable anyway?
>The location of the crash, at least 120 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine, could indicate the four-engine, 15-person radar plane either suffered a mechanical failure—or took a hit while operating closer to the front and tried to make it back to its base in Krasnodar before exploding.
There’s no MANPADs operating in occupied territory? Seems it would be incredibly easy for a resistance force to just sit out somewhere under a flight path in the middle of nowhere then get out of ddge.
How is it that the Russians don’t or can’t defend these behemoths?
*That*’s a shame.
Russia can’t have nice things. $330 million per aircraft. That would have been lots of schools..
.. wait schools would be dangerous to a dictator.
I bet they didn’t see that coming.
As Ukrainian Air Force masterfully put on twitter “Chipi chipi chapa chapa 🫡🇺🇦”
Did it fly off the radar?
great news!
Russia running low on Russian War Ships that can go fuck themselves has begun vigorously fucking their Russian War Planes.
Even if it’s a no-fly zone, Russia will still fly over and will not give a fuck
is this winning, but in russian?
I’m sure it fell out of a window somewhere
They also can’t fly at night!
What they’re short of is airframe hours. Basically, all airplanes have a max number of hours they can fly before the structure is considered compromised from stress and no longer airworthy. This is especially true for high-G fighter jets.
By far the vast majority of airframes in the RuAF were built before 1991 and are approaching end of life and they struggle mightily to build new even their legacy designs. So their pilots never get enough flight hours to actually be combat effective for fear of wearing out the planes.
If only they had a radar-plane to find it.
Or maybe an AirTag? I’m sure there’s a military version for around 5million…
Tic-toc
We appreciate your candor in the matter.
Some unconfirmed rumors about another SU-34 shot down. And some even claim another plane has been hit.
Really Dmitri? You’ve lost another A-50?
“Andrei, you’ve lost another submarine?”
Da, oligarchs need fuels for yachts not flight practices.
How could you lose it, its not a set of car keys. It’s not like it’s incon-fucking-spicuous.
AWACs are actually ludicrously expensive, so this is pretty devastating. That’s about a half billion dollar asset going down, everytime one gets shot down
Video
[A-50 releasing decoys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGlpPpXSdI), first interceptor explodes (a miss) 2nd interceptor nails it
[Another angle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfD4Cdflcdg), then the burning wreckage a little later
I’ll drink to that, congrats