Russian A-50 Radar Jet Intact After Claimed Drone Attack In Belarus

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After a claimed attack by a Belarusian partisan group on Sunday using drones, we have obtained satellite imagery of Machulishchy Air Base, located south of Minsk from Planet Labs. The image, taken this morning on February 28, 2023, shows the A-50 Mainstay airborne early warning and control aircraft that was supposedly attacked still largely intact on the flightline at the base.

You can read our full initial report on this claimed incident here.

Russian Air Force A-50U Mainstay. (Russian MoD)

The image outright confirms that the aircraft was not totally destroyed. There is some interesting shading on its radome and the right wing area that might indicate some kind of damage, although this is just a possibility at this time. It could just as easily be due to snow on the airframe. We also do not see any significant amount of vehicles or other activity around the aircraft, as one might expect to see had it suffered a recent attack.

The imagery is still being processed and we hope to get a full-color version soon for a more complete analysis of the aircraft and the airfield around it. At the very least, it shows that the aircraft is generally intact.

Author’s note: See update with new color imagery and analysis at the bottom of this post.

(PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION)

BYPOL, an organization of Belarusian military dissidents opposed to the current Lukashenko government, claimed on their Telegram channel on Sunday that they struck the A-50, damaging it in two critical places — its radome and its nose area.

Now this is big. Belarusian Partisans reportedly blew up a Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft at Machulishchy airfield near Minsk. According to the BYPOL initiative, the front and central parts of the plane, avionics and radar antenna were damaged. pic.twitter.com/IGFAx00973

— Tadeusz Giczan (@TadeuszGiczan) February 26, 2023

As we wrote on Sunday in our initial report, even causing damage to one of Russia’s few and highly prized A-50s would be a significant blow to the Russian Air Force. The U.K. Ministry Of Defense’s regular intelligence update on the war in Ukraine seems to agree wholly with that assessment.

(1/7) On 19 January 2023, amateur aircraft spotters observed a Russian A-50 MAINSTAY Airborne Early Warning (AEW) System accompanied by two MIG-31K FOXHOUND fighters departing from Machulishchy air base, Belarus.

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) February 28, 2023

UPDATE: 11AM EST—

We now have higher resolution color imagery of the A-50 in question. There appears to be no outright damage with the shadowed areas seen in the first image seemingly being due to the snow covering parts of the aircraft’s wings and radome. There are also a number of large vehicles nearby the aircraft in this image.

(PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION)

Another image from Maxar also confirms this analysis.

The first satellite image of Machulishchy airfield after the incident was published by @GianlucaMezzo, he claims that it was taken today, February 28.
The image shows the A-50 AEW&C aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/FmgUhu97gk

— Belarusian Hajun project (@Hajun_BY) February 28, 2023

This does not mean definitively that the aircraft was not damaged in some kind of an attack, but if that did occur, the damage is too small to see in the commercial satellite imagery currently available, which also puts into question its overall severity.

There appears to be no other outright visible damage to the airfield or its occupants:

(PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION)
(PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION)
(PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION)
(PHOTO © 2023 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION)

We will continue to update this post as more information comes available.

Contact the author: tyler@thedrive.com