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Beriev A-100 (Premiere)

2020 MODERN AIRCRAFT FUTURE FLIGHT

History

Beriev Aircraft Corporation and the Russian Air Force are developing a successor to the Cold War-era Beriev A-50 "mainstay" Airborne Early Warning and Control (AWACS) platform (detailed elsewhere on this site). Among other things, the newcomer will be equipped with a powerful new active phased array radar (named "Premier") from Vega Radio Engineering.

Like the A-50 before it, the A-100 will be based on the existing airframe of the four-engine family of the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport aircraft.

The A-100's equipment was actively tested on the A-100LL "flying laboratory", which itself was built on the frame of the A-50. Seeing the large rotating radome mounted on the rear fuselage spine forward of the tail, the new radar can track land and sea targets, giving it a crucial advantage on the battlefield. Externally, the A-100 continued the form and function established by the Il-76 series, with a flight deck on a short nose cone assembly, wings mounted high on the sides of the fuselage and a "T-shaped" tail.

The A-100 has multi-wheeled landing gear for ground operations, with each main wing swept back while handling the load of the pair of engine nacelles below.

The fuselage is from the Il-76MD-90A production model. The powerplant consists of four Aviadvigatel PS-90A-76 turbofan engine units, each producing up to 32,000 pounds of thrust. Official specs include an overall length of 152.9 feet, a wingspan of 165.7 feet and a height of 48.4 feet.

Top speed should be in the 900 km/h range.

The A-100 is expected to enter the Russian Air Force's inventory sometime around 2020. The first flight is tentatively scheduled for the end of 2017, after which a long and intensive testing phase will begin to test mission equipment in a positive manner.

The original A-50 currently (2017) in service with Russia and India was introduced late in the Cold War in 1984, with approximately 40 aircraft produced from 1978 to 1992. The A-50 was used as the successor to the earlier Tupolev Tu-126 "Moss" series (detailed elsewhere on this site).

The A-100 is internally considered to be the Izdeliye PM.