Key Points – A Ukrainian F-16 reportedly shot down a Russian Su-35 fighter jet over Russia’s Kursk Oblast on June 9th in what is described as an ingenious aerial ambush.
-According to German newspaper Bild, the key to the engagement was a Swedish-supplied Saab 340 AEW&C “spy plane” that detected the Su-35 from over 200 kilometers away.
-The Saab then provided targeting data to the F-16, allowing the pilot to launch an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile and destroy the Russian jet, negating the Su-35’s own long-range missile advantage and overcoming the known limitations of Ukraine’s F-16 datalinks.
How Ukraine Downed Russia’s Su-35 Fighter
WARSAW, POLAND – On June 9, the Ukraine Air Force (PSU) reported a donated F-16 flown by a Ukrainian pilot downed a Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) Sukhoi Su-35 Super Flanker.
The German newspaper Bild, one of the largest-circulation publications in the country, reported the Su-35 fighter had been brought down in the northeast of Russia in what it described as a “historic first.”
The PSU had said the day before that it had shot down a Su-35 in Russia’s Kursk Oblast but did not provide any additional details. The F-16s were supplied initially to Ukraine under the US Administration of Joe Biden after more than a year of lobbying and requests from Kyiv to be provided with the US single-engine, lightweight fighter.
Ukraine’s military and its central defense industrial firms, which support the PSU’s fleet of Russian, US, and French-made fighter aircraft, were initially jubilant when the F-16s first arrived. However, that enthusiasm quickly waned when they learned that the aircraft had been stripped of the Link 16 datalink system and other equipment needed for the aircraft to be capable of targeting and firing on Russian aircraft at extended ranges.
Three Russian fighter aircraft can carry and fire the most capable of the Russian air-launched weapons, the Vympel R-37 long-range air-to-air missile (AAM)—the Su-35, the Su-30SM and the MiG-31. This is something the F-16 fighter can match.
Ukrainian Ingenuity
The Su-35 crashed about 10 miles inside Russia, near the city of Korenevo in the Kursk Oblast. The pilot managed to escape to safety and reported both Bild and the Ukrainian war coverage on Telegram channel Stugna.
The website Oryx, which tracks losses in the conflict, reported this was the eighth such Su-35 lost in the war and the first since February 2. It is also the first of this aircraft type to be lost in an air-to-air kill by a Ukrainian or any other nation’s pilot.
So, how did the Ukrainians manage to shoot down the Su-35 deep inside Russia’s own airspace? What is reportedly the answer is that the shootdown was like other high-profile kills of Russian aircraft by the PSU—another in a series of ingenious Ukrainian ambushes.
One of the sites that has had some of the most detailed reporting on the Ukraine conflict stated that “unofficial sources indicate that the Russian plane was attempting to approach the Ukrainian border to intercept Ukrainian fighters conducting precision strikes on Russian territory.” The Su-35 was then “caught in a pre-planned aerial ambush and shot down, failing to complete its mission.”
Radar Wars
The radar installed in the older F-16s models operated by Ukraine is—at least on paper—no match for the Su-35’s NIIP N035 Irbis radar set. That radar is a Passive Electronic Scanning Array (PESA). It is a direct lineal descendent of another NIIP radar, the MiG-31’s N007 Zaslon radar—one of the most powerful Russian airborne radars ever made.
However, what made it possible for the PSU to bring down the Su-35—the key to the ambush—was Ukraine’s deployment of a Swedish Saab 340 (ASC 890) AEW&C early warning and control aircraft.
The Saab aircraft reportedly detected the Russian aircraft 200 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. It then handed off the Su-35’s coordinates to the F-16 pilot. This allowed the Ukrainian fighter pilot to launch the AIM-120 and take down the Su-35 well inside the missile’s typical engagement envelope—negating the range advantage of the aircraft’s R-37 AAM. The impact of the AAM on the Su-35 occurred only 16 kilometers from the Russian border, near the Korenevsky district.
The Saab 340 was initially supplied to Ukraine to support the PSU air defense forces—scanning for incoming Russian ballistic missiles and the Iranian-made HESA Shahed attack drones. Using it to ambush the Su-35 is another example in a long string of instances where Ukrainians have repurposed weapon systems for missions other than those for which they were initially intended.
Ukrainian defense analysts are now concerned that the capability the Saab aircraft has demonstrated will make a new high-priority target for the VKS. As one of them wrote on the Ukraine Fights Telegram channel, “This is a historic moment, but now we have to camouflage the SAAB aircraft as carefully as possible.”
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments, and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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