Article Posted on : - Nov 04, 2010

The A-50 Mainstay AWACS.

MOSCOW (BNS): Russia has sent the third and final A-50 ‘Mainstay’ airborne early warning and control (AWACS) aircraft it has built for India to Israel for fitting it with electronic equipment ahead of its delivery to the Indian Air Force (IAF).

Completing its part of the contract to deliver three A-50EI variants of the aircraft ordered by India in 2004, Russia has finished retrofitting the third transport plane of the series.

“We have finished retrofitting a (third) transport plane for special tasks, and sent it to Israel in October to be fitted with electronic equipment for future delivery to India,” a spokesman for the Taganrog-based Beriyev aircraft center, which has designed and developed the AWACS, was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

India has already received the other two AWACS, fitted with Israeli-made Phalcon radar systems, in May 2009 and March 2010.

The IAF, which has termed the Phalcon AWACS as “tremendous force multipliers”, plans to add two more such planes to its fleet.

The A-50 AWACS (NATO codenamed ‘Mainstay’) is based on the Russian-made llyushin Il-76MD military transport aircraft manufactured by the Ilyushin Aviation Complex.

The primary tasks of the A-50 AWACS are to detect and identify airborne objects, determine their coordinates and flight path data and transfer the information to command posts. It also acts as a control centre, guiding fighter-interceptors and tactical air force aircraft to combat areas in order to attack ground targets at low altitudes.

In many aspects, the A-50 is comparable to US Air Force’s E-3 Sentry aircraft. It is fitted with an aerial refueling system and electronic warfare equipment, and can detect targets up to 400 km away.

The A-50EI variant of the aircraft has been specifically developed under a tripartite agreement between India, Russia and Israel to meet the requirements of the IAF.

With several capabilities, including Electronic and Signal Intelligence gathering, the AWACS is set to play a vital role in Network Centric Operations once it gets operationalised along with the Operational Data Link (ODL), Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS) and the Air Force Net (AFNET) system of the IAF.