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Although it receives much less publicity than other programs to develop new generations of Russian military aircraft such as the Ka-52 attack helicopter or the Tu-160M bomber, the A-100 Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft has the potential to serve as a task force. Double the capabilities of the Russian fleet.
The aircraft made its maiden flight using the new sensor array in February 2022, more than four years after its maiden flight in November 2017, as the program faced significant delays due to shortcomings in the Russian electronics industry.
The A-100 will replace the A-50 that has been in service since 1989, the year the Cold War ended, and offers superior reliability, greater immunity to jamming or spoofing, greater endurance, a much longer detection range and less work for crews. Many of the technologies developed for the A-100 have already been used to enhance the A-50 and the development of the improved version A-50U, which has a high-quality sensor array and a detection range against small-sized fighter targets increased from 400 km to more than 700 km. The A-50U can track up to 60 targets simultaneously, coordinate operations with fighter and interceptor aircraft, and reportedly help guide long-range air-to-air missiles like the R-37M at their targets. Its much greater coverage and reliability make it an even more cost-effective asset.
The A-100's sensor array is said to have approximately 30 percent superior performance over the A-50U, and its ability to share data with new Russian combat aircraft such as the Su-30SM and MiG-31BM interceptors has the potential to greatly enhance the units' situational awareness and allow them to Engaging targets with greater accuracy. Unlike the NATO Air Force, which relies on lightweight fighters such as the F-16 and Rafale, the vast majority of Russian fighters and interceptors are heavyweights that already use very large radars. Thus, all modern Russian fighters and interceptors already have a detection range of 400 km or more, which reduces their need for airborne early warning aircraft. Additionally, newer Russian fighter designs often use multiple radars with the Su-35 deployed for three and the Su-57 stealth for six.
The advantages of Russian fighters in the size of the radar are complemented by the superior performance of the electronically scanned array radars, which the Soviet Air Force began to integrate into its interceptors since 1981, twenty years before its Western competitors, which means that, unlike the West, no Russian fighter has been developed in the past two decades that uses a radar mechanically. However, Russia's advantage in the radar technologies inherited from the Soviet Union has diminished since the Soviet collapse as the country has fallen behind in incorporating Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars into its combat aircraft. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has bypassed the electronically scanned array radar technologies of its fighters, which are used by almost all Russian fighters today, and moved directly to AESA radars. Since 2000, not a single Russian fighter has deployed AESA radars. Thus, the introduction of the A-100 will provide a much-needed improvement in situational awareness in the Russian Air Force, particularly as longer-range air-to-air missiles enter service on a larger scale, and will be followed in parallel with the entry of the first squadrons of AESA fighters - the new Su-57 stealth fighters..
https://eurasiantimes.com/russias-flying-radar-a-100-awacs-plane-makes-debut-flight/
https://twitter.com/UAC_Russia_eng?...g-radar-a-100-awacs-plane-makes-debut-flight/
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