cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/7336903
Speaking yesterday, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Russia’s Rostec state defense conglomerate, said that production of the A-50 would be restarted, according to a report from the state-run TASS news agency.
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.