To Stop Ukraine's Flamingo Missiles, Russia Launched Nearly All Of Its Radar Planes At Once
Four Beriev A-50Us took off around the same time
The Russian air force may have just five active Beriev A-50U radar early warning planes. On July 7, the Russians reportedly launched four of the lumbering planes at the same time. Their mission: to detect Ukrainian cruise missiles motoring toward strategic targets in western Russia.
“Putting almost all available flying radars in the sky at once—this is a level of readiness that had not been recorded before,” Cyber Boroshno noted.
It should go without saying that this intensity isn’t sustainable. The four-engine A-50U is a complex and maintenance-intensive machine. It’s not for no reason that Russian channels were recently fixated on the long effort to put one A-50U, 47 Red, through depot maintenance. 47 Red rejoined the other four active A-50Us in early June.
That the Russians surged 80% of the A-50U fleet into the air at one time speaks to the yawning gaps in Russian air defenses after months of intensive drone strikes on radars and launchers—and also speaks to the growing threat to Russian industry from Ukraine’s expanding arsenal of heavy cruise missiles. Specifically, the Fire Point FP-5 Flamingo.
The FP-5 was mostly a dud for a whole year after its first combat trials in May 2025. Up to May 2026, Fire Point and the Ukrainian army launched around 20 Flamingos that we can confirm. Just four hit anything of value. The missile “showed technical shortcomings, particularly in accuracy,” missile expert Fabian Hoffmann explained.
Fire Point got to work tweaking the FP-5’s inertial navigation system in order to minimize drift over a long flight.
