Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) states that it has hit a maritime anti-submarine aircraft of the type Il-38N in a drone attack against Yezhsk airport in southern Russia.
According to a statement published by the SBU’s press service on the organization’s official Telegram channel, the attack should have taken place before the explosion of a Varshavyanka-class submarine in Novorossiysk.
According to the message, the plane was stationed at the airfield where the 859th Center for Combat Use and Retraining of Flying Personnel of the Russian Navy’s Naval Air Force operates. To destroy the plane, a drone equipped with an air-detonating warhead with about two thousand downward-directed destructive elements was used.
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“The device exploded directly above the room that houses the aircraft’s main equipment and radars, and also caused damage to the engine,” SBU said. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the operation was planned and carried out by agents from the 13th Main Directorate of the Department of Military Counterintelligence of the Security Service of Ukraine.
The Il-38N is intended for maritime reconnaissance missions, search and tracking of submarines, control of sea areas, laying of minefields and torpedo attacks. According to the SBU, the stricken aircraft played an active role in the countermeasures against the maritime drones that Ukraine uses in the Black Sea.
This is a modernized version of the original Il-38, characterized by the integration of the advanced patrol and surveillance system Novella. The first flight of the modernized machine, still equipped with a mock-up of the search and navigation complex, took place in the spring of 2001. In the fall of 2022, full-scale state tests of the system began.
The first test aircraft was taken up in the Northern Fleet towards the end of 2011, with official handover in March 2012. The serial modernization of the Il-38 to the Il-38N standard, also known under the code name “Romance”, started in 2013 and was carried out by the Myasishchev Design Bureau in Zhukovsky near Moscow.
The exact differences between the Novella system and its basic export version, known as the “Sea Serpent”, remain classified. Information from Russian sources indicates that the complex can detect surface and underwater targets, and even targets under ice, within a radius of up to 320 kilometers, and that it has a dedicated electronic intelligence unit.
Currently, some of the Il-38 aircraft still in service with the Russian Naval Air Force use the Berkut navigation and targeting system, originally developed in the 1960s. This makes the Il-38N one of the most advanced platforms of its kind available to the Russian Navy.
Source and photos: Telegram @SBUkr. This content has been created with the help of KI and reviewed by the editors.
