Ukraine confirms combat flights of its new radar plane

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has confirmed that a Swedish-supplied Saab 340 airborne early warning aircraft (AEW&C), known as the ASC 890, has been flying combat missions over Ukraine since March 2026, according to information the ministry released detailing the country’s expanding fleet of Western combat aircraft.

Sweden first announced it would transfer the aircraft in May 2024, as part of its 16th and largest military aid package to Ukraine at the time, worth roughly $1.25 billion. The Ukrainian government said the transfer was confirmed in August 2025, and the plane’s first documented combat sorties over Ukraine followed roughly seven months later. Independent reporting had already suggested the aircraft was operating in Ukrainian airspace before the government’s confirmation: footage that surfaced on a Russian Telegram channel on March 20, 2026, appeared to show the plane in level flight, with background voices speaking Ukrainian, though the exact date and location of that video could not be independently verified at the time.

The ASC 890 is built on the Saab 340 regional airliner airframe and carries Saab’s Erieye radar in a distinctive rectangular fairing mounted above the fuselage, sometimes described as a “balance beam.” The radar uses active electronically scanned array technology and can detect and track aircraft and ships at ranges up to roughly 280 miles (450 kilometers), typically while the plane cruises at around 20,000 feet. A crew of six operates the aircraft, including a mission control officer, a combat control operator and a surveillance operator.

In practice, the aircraft is meant to work as a flying radar and command post. It can spot Russian aircraft, cruise missiles and drones from far outside the reach of ground-based radar, then pass that tracking data to Ukrainian fighter pilots so they can intercept threats without needing their own radars active, which would otherwise expose their position. Sweden’s defense minister said at the time of the 2024 pledge that the aircraft would give Ukraine “a new capability against both airborne and maritime targets.”

The Swedish Air Force operated two ASC 890 aircraft before the transfer, and both are understood to have gone to Ukraine, leaving Sweden temporarily without its own airborne early warning capability until replacement aircraft arrive. Delivery had been tied in part to modifications needed to make the plane’s data-sharing systems work with Ukraine’s fleet of F-16 fighters, according to Swedish defense officials who addressed reports of delay in March 2025.

Ukraine’s defense ministry described the ASC 890 as one piece of a broader air combat network built around Western fighter aircraft. The country’s F-16 fleet, the first jets of which arrived in 2024 from Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium, forms the core of that network, with pilot training conducted partly in Romania.

Ukraine has also begun receiving Mirage 2000 fighters from France starting in 2025 and expects up to 16 Gripen C/D fighters from Sweden, provided at no cost, with a newer Gripen E variant planned for delivery by 2030. Ukrainian officials say combining the ASC 890’s radar coverage with these fighter types is intended to bring Ukraine’s air defense closer to a NATO-standard, networked approach to air combat, rather than relying on individual aircraft operating with limited situational awareness.