Michael Bohnert

Defense Researcher / Engineer @RANDCorporation | future tech, drones, air defense, Russia-Ukraine war | Husband, father, skier | Views my own. RT ≠ endorsement.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

So I got a lot of questions about the A-50U and Russia. Here is an update that explains why these aircraft are so important for air defense. I'll also explain why Russia won't be getting replacements anytime soon

Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft are basically flying quarterbacks. They are able to see farther than most sensors. They can talk to almost everyone. Their crews can control many assets.

This all comes down to understanding the curvature of the Earth. The figure with the Red and Gray "blobs" is an annotated image of the reasonable area a radar can cover. Most radars must have a line of sight to the target. Because of the curvature of the Earth, a surface radar can only see a low flying object 10 to 20 miles away. An airborne radar can potentially see it from over 200 miles away.

This has two major implications. The first is it provides much earlier warning. Up to an hour for a strike drone and 10 to 30 minutes for a cruise missile. The second is it covers a much larger area easily replacing a dozen or more surface radars.

This means those ground radars can stay turned off until they need to target a missile. A radar that is turned off is much harder to find as there are no radar emissions to detect.

This line of sight advantage extends to communications as well. These aircraft have crews specially trained to control air and ground assets. They see and talk to almost everything.

Ukraine has spent considerable effort hitting these on the ground and the air. They take a lot of time to replace. The last A-50 was produced around 1992. Even with upgrades over the years, they have been out of production for a while. Note that the base IL-76 airframe is still produced, the radar requires special structures and reinforcements.

The replacement, the A-100, has still not entered serial production after over a decade. The radars are very expensive to build and require a lot of specialized parts. In 2025, Ukraine targeted one of the facilities with FP-1 drones, destroying the test aircraft and damaging the factory. Work has likely been on hold since.

New aircraft are unlikely for several years.

Russia is stuck with the half dozen or so they have for now. Basically just enough to protect Putin and occasionally help Russians fend off increasingly frequent Ukrainian FP-1 and FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles. The fact Ukraine has sent UK Storm Shadow missiles at near max range into Russia shows how far these A-50U aircraft are kept from the front.

Until tomorrow. Have a nice Sunday.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

Russia was able to use one of its last remaining A-50U airborne to provide aerial surveillance.

Its radar unobstructed by the curvature of the Earth was able to detect Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles from far away and defeat them.

This employment is likely exploitable.

Ukraine spent significant effort over the past few years to destroy A-50 aircraft for this very reason. These are officially called "Airborne Early Warning and Control" AEW&C for a reason. There powerful radars can see far and their onboard crew is able to direct aircraft and other assets.

While the exact number operating is unknown, it is reportedly in the low single digits. You need 4 to keep one up 24/7 and with 7 you can almost keep 2 up 24/7.

Given Russia is now being tracked as using these, Ukraine can plan operations around them where before they had to take the risk the sircraft were in the air.

Now that Russia is using them, Ukraine's drone strikes will be less effective due to early warning, but Ukraine can also plan around it. It may be a wash in terms of air defense.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@qstmarkets What is difficult right now is prior to the recent 9, most strikes had 1-2 hits. My backtesting and timing estimates aren't tuned ro 5-7 successful hits.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

Even though Ukraine struck 9 refineries in 11 days, we haven't seen a major change in overall refinery levels.

Several Russian refineries that had been spared strikes for several months likely came back online over the past 2 weeks. However, there aren't any left in that category.

This is likely why we are hearing reports of localized outages. The system has to adjust to a rapid shift of supply as ~500 kbpd came online and ~600 kbpd when offline in rather concentrated areas.

Going forward, expect a more direct downtrend with every strike. However, don't expect significant systemic shortages until the solid line drops into the gold band or outages until it reaches the bottom of the band.

Note that a 9 hard strikes per 11 days is likely significantly more than Russia's repair capacity. Restarts take an average off 45-60 days to recover from major hits. Any rate above 0.5 refineries per day have a very noticeable impact.

Based on September-October outage maps such as those from @MalcontentmentT , ~5 more strikes in a week would probably make it very colorful.

Refinery list is in the first reply and methodology in the second.

And as a reminder, this is based on an experimental process being tested real-time. It uses only public sources that can be delayed or noisy such as a restart/shutdown only being announced 2 weeks late. Further, correlating sources such as NASA FIRMS satellite data has some seasonal and environmental quirks. Expect variations in the record when I post updates every ~2 weeks.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@eapaia @qstmarkets Hits

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@Snaiperiss Well, Russia already destroyed all of Ukraine's few refineries. Logicallyz Ukraine should reciprocate

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@hank_tuttle2 Range is too far. Also, these are open unprotected targets. Smaller warheads do quite well

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@alexieel27 I mean you could make an post a list

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@alexieel27 So there were several refineries that had been down for a while that came back online over the last two weeks to offset. Your intuition is spot on for any attacks on the next week

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@PeekeeDev No, I think they simply hit some major refineries first. I expect the repaired ones to be hit soon. At this pace the first month is a rotating set of hits. The second month is "whack-a-mole"

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@WCPGW_SU I expect the situation will call for an early update next week.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@ChrisWithRobots @allig8or_dundee It has been very very hard to get credible info. I don't even have good ciews of what has been hit

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

I wanted to make a video to show the effects of drone speed on air defenses.

I used the Oct 30 Novokuibyshevsk refinery strikes as my example. I have three drones approach the refinery and pass a tower with a Pantsir.

The first is an FP-1 at cruising speed. The second is an FP-5 at Banderol speed for comparison. The third is an FP-5 at cruising speed.

You see the approach from the view of the Pantsir. You see the pass from below. The final scene is the FP drone flying away towards the refinery stacks in the distance from the Pantsir's perspective.

As you can see, speed make significant difference in the leadup. One other note is how hard it is to see the drones with their profile.

I want to be clear. The drones, the Pantsir, the tower, and the refinery stacks are all to scale.

I just wanted to give everyone a representation of the speed. Apologies, I didn't quite get the engine sound right for the FP-5 doppler shift.

I am starting to recreate all refinery strikes from social media footage to support battle damage assessment to update by oil tracker.

Feel free to post a link to a video source for any strike you would like recreated. An example is in the replies.

Screenshot and map in the replies.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

Methodology article.

https://t.co/WkjQ3lTZ3f

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

https://t.co/5tzl5lebaf

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

The refinery by refinery list

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@morganlinton But I have 0 plans of ditching hermes. Its ability to be my gremlin in the machine for home automation and server maintenance is unmatched

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@morganlinton But duet seems like a total pain for everything else. Bot is like a personal assistant, personal support staff, home it repair, graphics artist, professional shopper,and fellow devs.

Duet is basically just the chief dev and program manager at work.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@allig8or_dundee thanks. It has been some trial and error. This wasn't possible before Opus 5.5, Sol 6, or Grok 4.7.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@bot @bot start setup

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

@allig8or_dundee Note that I have pre built every refinery, major oil storage, major port oil terminals, and Moscow. Long term plan is to ingest video and have a full recreation in 2 hours from first posts of the strike fully automated. Current workflow is still at ~8 hour and hybrid

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

https://t.co/z2trQkuSLB

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

I've been working on new updates to my oil tracker. Here is a preview.

The version 3 integrated satellite tracking and I showcased it last week. Version 4 will add direct damage assessments from footage.

I'm developing a workflow that takes OSINT footage, correlates it to 3D models of drones and locations, works back the trajectories, and helps me identify where drones actually hit and what they struck. This will allow me to assess and estimate what was hit even if the actual hit was obscured.

This is from the June 16/17/18 strikes on the Moscow Oil Refinery. Original video in the replies

Still a work in progress, but hoping to add soon.

As I am testing, feel free to post videos/links that provide the date, location, and a video of a strike that you want to see a 3D recreation of. It helps prioritize beta testing.

[Michael Bohnert @mbohnert]

Just an overhead view of an example approach