Ukraine will receive the ASC 890 aircraft, Russia will be hunting for it from day one, - Forbes
Date: 2024-05-30 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: MILITARY ASSISTANCE
Sweden unexpectedly announced that it would transfer an early warning aircraft, or, in military parlance, an early warning aircraft - ASC 890, to Ukraine.
As Forbes notes, these aircraft have a Link 16 data transmission system. It allows them to securely exchange data with F-16 fighters, which Ukraine should soon receive.
But AWACS aircraft are very vulnerable. This can also be confirmed by the Russian Aerospace Forces, which entered the war against Ukraine with eight or nine operational A-50 aircraft and lost two of them due to Ukrainian strikes. The Ukrainians even hit the plant where the A-50 is built and repaired.
A Swedish-made AWACS aircraft may be even more vulnerable than the A-50, the publication notes.
"The A-50 has four jet engines with a top speed of 560 mph (about 900 km per hour) and a ceiling of 39,000 feet (about 12 km). The Saab 340 is a twin-engine turboprop aircraft that flies at a speed of no more than 300 miles. per hour (about 480 km per hour) and rises to an altitude of no more than 25,000 feet (7.6 km). are using the most powerful air-to-air missile in Russia’s 27-month war against Ukraine, the R-37M, which has a range of more than 300 km,” the material says.
The long range of the R-37M, combined with the very high performance and high operating altitude of the MiG-31BM, allows it to be largely free to threaten Ukrainian aircraft, the Royal United Nations Institute for Defense Studies noted.
The mere presence of Russian aircraft armed with P-37Ms has more than once forced Ukrainian fighter pilots to abandon missions and dive into cover. It's worth noting that the hulking Saab 340 is not all that maneuverable.
AWACS aircraft cannot hide. They are essentially radar platforms. When radars are turned off, they don't do their job. But the radar that emits the radiation doesn't just detect targets—it can also be detected.
“It’s safe to say that every time the Saab 340 takes off, the Russians will know about it. It’s not for nothing that the US Air Force is abandoning traditional AWACS aircraft and increasingly shifting the early warning mission to satellites,” the publication emphasizes.
Even with the vulnerability of these aircraft, the Ukrainian Air Force will never give up the ASC 890. But to avoid losing the aircraft instantly, the Ukrainians will need to find a way to reduce the threat from Russian missiles that the aircraft will face.
This could mean that it will fly infrequently and its radars will be turned off until the last possible second. It could also mean that flights will be carried out in the safest part of the airspace - in western Ukraine, along the border with Poland.
