Russia Scrambles to Replace Downed Spy Planes With Recon Drones

Russian forces in southern Ukraine are using drones as substitutes for downed spy planes worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Kyiv has said, but Moscow is unlikely to find a quick and equally effective fix for the recent loss of airborne-command aircraft.

Moscow is "trying to replace" its A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft with reconnaissance drones, Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine's southern forces, said in remarks reported by Ukrainian media on Monday. "They are trying to collect the information that the A-50 can no longer transmit," Humeniuk said. Newsweek has emailed the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

The Kremlin has lost two A-50 spy planes since the new year, according to Ukraine's military. Kyiv said it took out an A-50 over the Sea of Azov in mid-January, followed by a second A-50 late last week. Newsweek has as yet not verified these claims.

Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the GUR, said in a statement that it had downed a A-50U on February 23 close to the Russian town of Primorsko-Akhtarsk, close to the Sea of Azov in Russia's Krasnodar region. Unnamed sources told Ukrainska Pravda newspaper that Ukraine had used an S-200 anti-aircraft system to target the aircraft. Russian sources disputed Kyiv's claims, saying Ukraine was not responsible for the loss of the A-50.

A few days after the first A-50 was shot down in January, the U.K. Defense Ministry said Russia had started using another such plane within Russian territory around the Krasnodar region. Moscow likely hoped to prevent the successful targeting of any more of the spy planes, the U.K. government said at the time.

"It's certainly plausible that Russians are scrambling drones to plug some of the gaps" coming up from the loss of A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft, said U.K.-based drone expert, Steve Wright. "But it's certainly not a one-for-one replacement," he told Newsweek.

Beriev A-50 aircraft, also known by their NATO moniker, Mainstay, help Russia seek out Ukrainian air defenses and coordinate attacks to be carried out by other Russian aircraft, such as fourth-generation jets. Each one comes with a price tag of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The A-50 has a "powerful radar which operates outside the frequency of normal cameras and is capable of recognising movements of vehicles on the land and in the air in a single sweep," Wright said.

"That is hard to replicate with drones, which, even if equipped with radar, lack the size and power to provide comparable radar coverage," added Frederik Mertens, an analyst with The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. "Nor can you do this with cheap drones," he told Newsweek, as kitting drones out with radar makes the uncrewed vehicles much more expensive assets.

Russia may be using a combination of well-known reconnaissance drones, such as its Orlan-10 and the larger Orlan-30, Samuel Bendett, of the Center for Naval Analyses, told Newsweek. Drones have come to the fore in the more than two years of war in Ukraine—often deployed for reconnaissance—and have occasionally worked better on the battlefield than the likes of artillery, according to Ukrainian officials and experts.

No drone can individually provide the same capability as an AWACS, "but a combination of different drones with varying ranges and altitudes can fill in some of the gaps left open by the loss of A-50," Bendett said.

Replacing airborne early warning aircraft with uncrewed vehicles is an undertaking that would need years of dedicated development, Mertens said. Moscow could also use infrared search and track systems, which would again take time and resources, and wouldn't replace radar, he added.

"There are ways that future drones will probably replace these expensive and vulnerable systems, but for now, they are just providing a catch-up measure," Wright said.

The spy planes are very valuable assets to Russia, and Ukraine said over the weekend that Moscow has a handful of A-50 aircraft remaining.

"There are still six planes left," Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence agency, said on Sunday. "That's two full shifts. Another A-50 will 'fall' and round-the-clock duty will have to be stopped," the GUR chief added.

As of late 2023, Russia had an estimated two A-50s and eight A-50U aircraft, according to the Military Balance 2024, compiled and published by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies. This count was finalized ahead of the two losses reported by Ukraine this year.

Between February 2022 and the start of October 2023, Russia lost a confirmed two A-50s, according to Dutch open-source intelligence tracker, Oryx.

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