Actually, the Madcap was supposed to be land based. Apparently, the Mainstay was more for the PVO to patrol its northern borders (its relative lack of tracking ability won't be a big problem then). The Madcap was supposed to be for the VVS. Given their small size, I'm guessing they planned to produce a lot of them.
They tried toying around with the idea of making it sea-based for awhile, but decided that there was too much modification work to do and decided to go with a fresh plane called Yak-44 (a large E-2 lookalike). They were about to make a prototype and then the Soviet Union collapsed. Damn it...
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