78
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
78 points (100.0% liked)
Ukraine
8205 readers
698 users here now
News and discussion related to Ukraine
*Sympathy for enemy combatants is prohibited.
*No content depicting extreme violence or gore.
*Posts containing combat footage should include [Combat] in title
*Combat videos containing any footage of a visible human must be flagged NSFW
Donate to support Ukraine's Defense
Donate to support Humanitarian Aid
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I guess the question "why wouldn't they just build the A-100 instead?" has about the same answer as "why don't they just build thousands of T-14 tanks?". They can't. Partly perhaps because it needs Western electronics, which are difficult to obtain.
That aside, restarting production of a large and complex aeroplane is going to take years.
It's built on an Il-76 base, which is still in production. So my guess is that the base plane isn't probably that bad.
Plus, there are gonna be existing Il-76 planes that I assume that they could convert.
The A-50 hasn't been produced in over 30 years, though. So this isn't gonna be just rehiring some people who have been doing something else for a few years. This is restarting Soviet-era production.
Saying it hasn't been built in 30 years is a bit misleading. Although the base Il-76 airframes may be that old, the latest substantial avionics upgrade (designated A-50U) is less than 15 years old or so (first delivery in 2011), which isn't too bad for military and aircraft systems. A lot of the E-3 equipment is older. That is not to say it is more capable than the E-3, it probably isn't, but I'd say a fully functioning A-50U should not be underestimated. It's even got toilets! Then again, it is also not clear to me that any "U" models are currently airworthy.
But the point is they can't use the 2011 blueprints if it needs a lot of modern electronics.
I'd bet they really end up cobbling together a couple more from the scrap heaps they parked years ago. At one point they had a couple dozen. But it seems only a few were operational.