There’s some evidence of an S-300-Patriot team-up. A Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber reportedly detected a previously unknown Ukrainian S-300 battery switching on its radar in the minutes before the A-50 and Il-22 were hit.
If the S-300 battery did the initial illumination, it must have passes along target tracks to a nearby hidden Patriot battery. “The latter powered up its radar for only a few seconds: long enough to obtain its own targeting data, but too short for the Russians to dependably detect its emissions and assess them as a threat,” Cooper surmised.
“And then the Ukrainians started firing their missiles.”
A minute later, the missiles exploded—destroying the A-50 and damaging the Il-22. “With their fire-action over,” Cooper wrote, “the Ukrainian S-300 and PAC-2/3 crews promptly ceased emitting, and started packing [up] their systems to move them away and thus avoid any possible Russian retaliation.”
Down one A-50, the Russian air force may have just two of the jets left; the other six A-50s reportedly are in need of upgrade and overhaul. Unless the air force is willing to risk the last two flyable A-50s, it must make peace with its new inability to provide radar coverage over all of Crimea.
It must, in other words, accept the risk of continuing—indeed, escalating—Ukrainian missile raids on Russian forces on the peninsula.
