Saab ‘Eye-in-the-Sky’ Radar Plane Flies First Probable Mission for Ukrainian Air Force (2025)

Ukraine’s first-ever NATO-standard advanced airborne early warning and control () surveillance and monitoring aircraft likely flew an initial mission in airspace over the western Lviv region on Monday, but Ukraine may not fully benefit from the force-multiplying capabilities available without Link 16 in its newest Western warplanes.

The flight over Ukraine’s Lviv region per local media marked a big step forward in the modernization of the Ukrainian Air Force and the air surveillance and monitoring technologies it operates – but questions remain about whether the data collected by the state-of-the-art air surveillance planes will reach Ukrainian pilots in time to intercept incoming Russian bombers or cruise missiles.

Open source air tracking platforms recording the location and flight patterns of aircraft with their transponders turned on showed an unidentified plane flying a rough clover leaf pattern in skies above western Ukraine, at altitudes around 10,000 feet. Air watch platforms tracked an aircraft with the same call sign, WELCOME, in Ukrainian airspace near Poland and Hungary on Tuesday.

Ukraine’s Ukrainska Pravda news magazine and most major Ukrainian media reported the plane was a Saab ASC890 airborne early warning & control (AEW&C) aircraft, a twin propeller flying radar capable of detecting targets up to 450 km away. The manufacturer’s designation for the airframe is the Saab 340. The Swedish Air Force designation of the airborne radar system is the S-100.

The Russian milblogger FighterBomber, a prolific air operations reporter, in a Monday post told his 500,000+ followers that the Saab appeared not to be on an air surveillance mission, and more likely was calibrating on board equipment with ground stations. Flight tracking data reviewed by the Kyiv Post did not identify the aircraft by type.

The Swedish government announced in late May 2024 that it would donate two Saab 340s to Ukraine as part of a €1.16 billion ($1.37 billion) military assistance package. Stockholm officials at the time said aircrew and maintenance personnel training, along with ground facilities preparation, would take approximately twelve months, and that initial delivery would be tied to Ukraine’s future fielding of combat aircraft capable of handling the Saab’s advanced data feeds and communications systems.

Ukraine’s Air Force announced its first-ever operation of a NATO-standard fighter aircraft, the US-manufactured F-16, in Aug. 2024. According to late 2024 military news reports, the F-16s donated to Ukraine by Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway have had their US-made Link 16 digital data transfer systems removed or disabled at the insistence of the US – mostly for fear it could be compromised if hardware, software, or firmware made its way into Russian hands.

As a result, even when the Ukrainian Air Force Saab ASC890s were to become fully operational, air targeting data collected by those planes might not easily be sent to F-16s operated by the Ukrainians, because there would be no digital data feed transceiver in the F-16s.

Military news media in late 2024 reported that the absence of the Link 16 data transfer system aboard the Ukrainian F-16s would seriously weaken the ability of Ukrainian fighter pilots to carry out intercept sorties and other air defense missions.

However, according to a March 2025 Euromaidan report, Swedish Defense Ministry officials said the transfer of the Saab airspace monitoring and coordinating planes to Ukraine was on track and that those aircraft would be able to operate effectively with Ukraine’s F-16s.

“The timing of ASC 890 deliveries is linked to when certain modifications to F-16 fighters will be ready. There is no delay in the transfer of airborne early warning aircraft to Ukraine,” the Lithuanian Delfi news agency reported.

The second NATO-standard fighter operated by the Ukrainian Air Force, the French-made Mirage 2000, with an airframe designed in the 1970s, in its early versions, was not equipped with the more recently developed US-made Link 16 data transfer system. Later versions of the Mirage, like the latest-model upgraded Mirage 2000-5F Vi, are equipped with “a full set of modern communication systems, including Link 16, MICA air-to-air missiles with either active radar or infrared seekers, an upgraded RDY-2 radar, and an improved engine,” the Ukrainian military information group Militarniy reported.

Ukrainian military media usually estimates the number of F-16s operated by the Ukrainian Air Force at 12-18 aircraft, and the number of Mirages at 3-6 aircraft.

The Militarnyi report said Ukraine’s Mirages are likely the upgraded Mirage 2000-5F version. Ukrainian and French officials have mostly avoided making public details of capabilities of the Mirage fighters sent to Ukraine. According to the state-assisted French Air to Ukraine news platform, citing President Emmanuel Macron, the mark of Mirage now operated by Ukraine is the fully-upgraded Mirage 2000-5, and delivery of a new batch of Mirage 2000S-5 fighters will take place “in the near future”.

The Erieye radar system aboard the Saab 340 is Sweden-developed and fully capable of interfacing with NATO-standard aircraft equipped with modern data links. Introduced in the mid-1990s and in use by 11 air forces worldwide, the radar is designed to pick out aircraft at ranges up to 450 km. A four-member air controller crew uses processors and radars aboard the Saab to detect and track aircraft at ranges of about 350 km. The Erieye radar is designed to detect very low-flying aircraft and can also track ships, Saab corporate statements have said.

Russian kamikaze drones penetrate Ukrainian air defenses almost daily. Ukrainian air force officials say national air defenses usually manage to intercept at least two-thirds of incoming Russian cruise missiles, but some weapons always get through because of gaps in airspace monitoring radars, limited numbers of fighters to intercept the incoming cruise missiles, shortages of defensive anti-aircraft missiles and ultra-low flight paths taken by the Russian weapons.

NATO air surveillance aircraft operating over Poland, Romania and the western Black Sea monitor Ukrainian airspace constantly. A mostly US-run satellite network augments the surveillance and monitoring. Since the early days of the full-scale war, Atlantic Alliance officials have passed on data to Kyiv about Russian aircraft and missiles approaching or flying over Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have complained that United States insistence the data not reach the Ukrainian automatically, but be transferred only after the information is vetted by NATO for security and then delivered in printed format by hand to a Ukrainian military representative slows down Ukrainian Air Force response to incoming threats, and at times prevents Ukrainian air defenses from intercepting approaching Russian cruise missiles and drones.

In March, following a public spat in the Oval Office wherein US President Donald J. Trump harangued Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about the degree to which Ukraine should be grateful for American military assistance, amid negotiations over US companies’ access to future mineral rights in Ukraine and the associated profit sharing, Trump ordered all US military data transfers to Kyiv stopped.

Kyiv criticized the move and said its air defenses were badly degraded, risking civilian lives being targeted by an illegally invading aggressor. The Trump regime reversed the decision on Mar. 11.

Once operational, theoretically, the Saab ASC890 flying radar in its Saab 340 platform would allow Ukrainian air defenses to operate independently of US-influenced NATO air surveillance and monitoring data collected by radar and other sensors.

However, as with other non-US air forces, a US executive branch’s, i.e., a presidential administration’s, willingness to help Ukraine defend its skies would still be important, because of the extent of the American worldwide satellite network.