Russia's rare and costly A‑50 aircraft lost: was it Ukraine or an internal error?

"This is an extremely rare machine", they write. Russian war correspondent Vladimir Romanov, referred to by Bielsat, is among those reporting the downing of the Russian machine designated for long-range radar reconnaissance and control.

– Another A-50, same sector again; Ukrainians had nothing to do with this. Missiles were fired from near Mariupol – wrote Romanov, indicating that the aircraft was shot down by Russian air defences. However, there are internet reports suggesting that the destruction of another A-50 may indeed have been carried out by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The A-50 Beriev in question is the successor to the Tupolev Tu-126. The machine is designed to detect and track any objects in the air up to approximately 650 kilometres (approximately 404 miles) from the Liana radar installed on the aircraft fuselage. The A-50 can also track ground targets, but the detection range is reduced to around 300 kilometres (about 186 miles). Despite this limitation, it allows observation missions, interception of enemy units, and supports ground attacks from the Russians.

The A-50 first entered service with the Russian army in the 1980s, with the induction happening in 1984. The aircraft measures nearly 50 m in length, 15 m in height, and about 50.5 m in wingspan. Its top speed is approximately 900 kilometres per hour (around 559 miles per hour), and it operates at an altitude of about 13 kilometres (roughly 8.1 miles). The aircraft's range is roughly 7500 kilometres, or about 4653 miles.

As reporter Karolina Modzelewska from Virtual Poland previously noted, the cost of producing a single A-50 aircraft is around 330 million dollars. Therefore, the loss of another aircraft of this type is a significant hit to Russia, not just because of the production cost, but also since the Russian Federation currently possesses eight A-50s, according to Forbes' calculations.