Beriev A-50: Russia's airborne early warning aircraft that's fallen prey to Ukrainian missiles
Since the start of 2024, Russia has lost two of its A-50 airborne early warning aircraft – shot down by Ukrainian surface-to-air missiles.
Kyiv also launched a drone strike deep into Russia targeting an aircraft factory refurbishing the planes.
The A-50 is known to Russia as the Beriev A-50 Shmel - or "bumblebee". Nato calls it the Mainstay.
The A-50 is Russia’s airborne early warning aircraft – their version of the American E-3 AWACS - and is based on the Ilyushin IL-76 transport plane.
It first flew in 1978 and entered service with the Russian air force in 1984.
About 40 were produced, but as few as eight are thought to still be in service - and not all of those are flying. There have been four different variants of the A-50. The most modern is the A-50U, which was delivered to the Russian air force in 2009.
The newer A-50s have an upgraded digital avionics suite, replacing the old analogue systems. Just like the US AWACS the A-50 operates at high altitude.
That allows it to detect and track aircraft at much longer distances than ground-based radar because it can see over the curvature of the earth. The A-50 has a crew of 15 - five flight crew and 10 mission crew operating the radar warning and guidance system.
It has a range of around 5,000 kilometres and can stay airborne for just under eight hours.
The A-50 has two main roles. It can detect and identify up to 60 airborne threats at once. It can work out their coordinates and flight path, and then pass that information to a command centre on the ground.
Secondly, it can act as control centre, guiding as many as 12 Russian fighters and bombers simultaneously to attack particular ground targets, usually at low level.
The A-50's radar can see fighter jets up to 140 miles away, and bigger aircraft at higher altitudes out to a range of 200 miles.
It's thought the Russian air force received eight upgraded A-50Us. In Ukraine it's used them over the Azov Sea, providing guidance to Russian bombers.
But two have been lost - shot down by Ukrainian surface-to-air missiles. And of the six A-50s left it's not known how many are actually operational.
The UK MOD says it's likely Russia is trying to update them to try and deal with modern Western jets like the F-16, which Ukraine is expected to start operating this summer.
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