Drones Burned Russian "weapons Of The Future" In Taganrog
- 26.11.2025, 8:32
The only A-100 and "flying beam" will no longer take off .
Ukrainian defense forces on the night of November 25 carried out a daring operation in the Rostov region, where the Beriev Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex in Taganrog is located.
Satellite images analyzed by OSINT experts clearly show: two massive Il-76s, converted into flying laboratories, turned into a pile of metal as a result of the strikes, writes "Dialog.UA".
The destroyed aircraft are not just equipment, they are the last hopes of Russian aviation for a breakthrough in technology. The A-100 Premier was positioned as a super-modern wing-mounted radar capable of detecting targets hundreds of kilometers away and coordinating attacks. Development began in 2014 at the same plant in Taganrog.
The then head of the Defense Ministry, Sergei Shoigu, loudly promised: these machines would completely replace the outdated A-50, which since Soviet times had helped track ships, aircraft and even ground targets. The first deliveries were expected in the mid-2010s, but the project failed.
The deadlines were delayed, the aircraft was never finalized. As a result, the only prototype, which took to the air in 2016, took off with equipment only once, in February 2022, before the full-scale invasion.
It is noteworthy that Russia also has almost no A-50 RLVs left. In the course of a full-scale war, Ukraine was able to destroy two of these aircraft, several others were damaged.
The cost of such machines is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars - for comparison, one A-50 cost about three hundred million.
The expensive prototype burned down at night in the parking lot of the Taganrog-Yuzhny airfield, depriving Russia of a chance for mass production.
Alongside it was also destroyed the A-60, an even more exotic project from the 1980s, when the USSR dreamed of laser weapons against American satellites. It is a flying platform with a powerful cannon capable of blinding optics or disabling spies in space.
The Russians built only two copies based on the IL-76; one burned down in 1993 during tests. The second one stood in Taganrog for ten years, frozen for lack of funds.
Even Russian sources did not deny what happened. Z-channel Fighterbomber, close to the Russian Air Force, confirmed the destruction of the planes. However, it tried to portray what happened as a benefit to the Russian Federation, claiming that the planes were allegedly inoperable.
This strike is part of a systemic weakening of Russian airborne intelligence. By the end of 2023, the Russian Air Force had only eight A-50s left. Now, experts estimate there are no more than three on the road. In 2024, two were shot down in southern Russia - one possibly by its own air defense.
In the summer of 2025, Operation "Spider's Web" destroyed a couple more of these aircraft at an airfield in Ivanovo. Without these "eyes in the sky," Moscow loses the ability to guide missiles, coordinate the fleet and monitor Ukrainian positions.
"Today, Russia has almost no RLW aircraft left, which are necessary to control combat operations: this includes detecting objects at sea, in the air and on land, monitoring space, guiding missiles, and coordinating forces and means," experts summarize.