How soon is soon? And how many will be produced, say, per year or 2 years? These aircraft are priority targets for any enemy and they WILL shoot down several of them with some help from western ISR and the usual Russian negligence. They need to be available in sufficient numbers ASAP and with solid production backing them up to quickly replenish losses.
Soviet Union and United States used AWACS differently. The impact that is given to those A-50 shootdowns is also misunderstood because most analysts commenting on it attribute the same role to Russian AWACS as they have in US air doctrine.
US is a maritime power with offshore power projection and therefore has consistently depended on AWACS as the primary form of command and control for aerial operations since 1970s both for USAF and USN. USSR was a land power with very limited offshore power projection which relied on extensive ground-based command network and integrated GBAD early warning radars into the system.
United States built 68 E-3 of which some were export sales but USN also used approximately 100 E-2s. All AWACS systems built by US sum to over 600 planes including over 300 E-2s and over 200 EC-131s.
Soviet Union built 12 Tu-126 AEW aircraft between 1965 and 1984 and used them in areas where ground-based networks didn't provide sufficient coverage. Then in the 1980s after studying American use of AWACS it developed the A-50 which was introduced in 1985 but only 40 were built by 1991 and proper
tactics were never developed.
The US uses AWACS to perform the entirety of air control including massing air assets within own airspace. US air doctrine relies on large-scale simultaneous operations which are characteristic of a maritime mindset. Soviet doctrine is very strongly informed by land operations so it uses its airspace in the same manner. Soviet doctrine uses strategic depth, dispersion of bases and assets and enduring operations to a much greater degree because Soviet doctrine relied on preemption i.e. whenever NATO attack was considered imminent WarPact would pre-empt it. To that effect WarPact retained greater nominal readiness of its forces on the European front and in Germany in particular.
That also had a technological rationale - early radars weren't very efficient and the computing power available was very limited if it had to be carried in the air. US used AWACS for logistical and doctrinal reasons. USSR didn't need it so they relied on a solution which was more practical. It wasn't until the 1980s that technology advanced enough that AWACS became a new type of tactical asset - not only due to better capabilities of AWACS radars but also because they could finally direct BVR engagements because missiles began to be more effective at longer ranges. USSR built A-50s not for MiG-23s and 25s but for Su-27s. Note that MiG-31 has its own unique mini-AWACS role that it fulfilled with the help of ground-based control stations.
All this has inevitable consequences to Russian air doctrine since Russia inherited Soviet systems and institutional knowledge and then was frozen in development for 20 years due to lack of funds.
Russia doesn't use AWACS as mobile command posts but as mobile radars with extreme elevation or gap-fillers, very much how USSR used Tu-126 early on. Their purpose is to see beyond curvature of Earth and terrain obstacles and to support VKS planes with early warning information.
A-50s can't do more, because they are very outdated systems with radars of the same architecture as E-3 but with slightly lower performance. A-50U does not upgrade the radar antenna only replaced analogue systems in the computing units with modern digital systems. The main purpose of A-50U program was to extend the life of the aircraft and to improve upgradeability of the interface.
The reason why Russia maintained so few A-50s - between 9 and 12 depending on reports - was because they didn't have a doctrinal solution for more so there was no reason to commit resources. The best evidence for that is the enduring lack of aerial refueling aircraft. Without refuelers no long-duration air mission is possible so no long-duration aerial AEW and C2 capability is necessary. If Russia doesn't plan to acquire more aerial refuelers then it definitely doesn't need more AWACS. MiG-31 already introduced the mini-AWACS role and e.g. Su-35S or Su-30SM2 can be directed by ground control to illuminate an area where long-range early warning ground radars see missiles incoming at low altitude.
Furthermore RUSI wrote in their report on aerial operations in Ukraine that AFU claimed that they were able to reliably disrupt and jam A-50s operating over Donbas for majority of the war and viewed the ground-based early waring radars, especially those capable of detecting low altitude targets, as a greater threat.
The shootdowns are effective as a psychological attack and they do limit the situational awareness of Russian air force but not to the extent that it can't perform its basic missions. That is unaffected by lack of AWACS because VKS functioned for the entire two years of war without AWACS support over the majority of the front. This doesn't mean that VKS will have the same capabilities as if they had fully capable AWACS because that's physically impossible but they will not be nearly as hindered as many uninformed analysts claim. The thing that hinders VKS most is doctrine, structure and command system not lack of AWACS.
A loss of A-100 would be more painful but so far there are only 2 of them in service, and the first flight with a radar active took place in 2022 so Russia hasn't had the time to learn how to use them properly and likely would default to the same role as A-50U, only with better radar.
Also one of the main roles of AWACS is to control friendly aircraft flying with their radars turned off. This way the air mission can assemble the numbers at a safe distance and avoid detection by enemy ELINT systems. 450km is 30 minutes of flight time at 0,7Ma so once the full tactical element is assembled and ready for attack the enemy defenses have only 30 minutes to respond with sufficient force. The usual minimum time of reaction threshold for fighters is 10-15 minutes but for a large formation the number of aircraft in readiness may not be sufficient. If enemy doesn't have radars capable of detecting fighters at low-mid altitudes beyond 200km then the reaction time is limited to 15 minutes which makes full surprise achievable for OCA missions - attacks on airfields and C2 stations.
This is the main reason why AWACS is valuable, but there is little use for it for Russia since they lack aerial refueling so time for assembling of strike formation would be very limited and no large force could be used for missions.
Russians are not waging their air war this way. They are not even replicating Soviet doctrine. They are fundamentally defensive force sitting behind fortified defense zones guarded by S-400/S-300 and striking from a distance even against a country without an air force like Ukraine.You train as you fight and fight as you train and since Russia never intended to fight a 2+ year war against Ukraine it never prepared for it. This is why their offensive operations were so lackluster and had such questionable results despite the number of aircraft indicating that they could attempt to replicate Desert Storm.
That too was western analysts projecting their superficial understanding of Desert Storm at their lack of understanding of the Russian air doctrine which was two errors on top of each other.
