Ukrainian naval drone's historic sinking of Russian warship under questioning: was carelessness to blame?

Prior attacks by Ukrainians on Russian ships, utilising small, unmanned floating units, occurred under specific conditions.

Until now, Ukrainians have aimed at ships docked in a port or anchored nearby. Whilst this doesn't diminish the scale of their successes, it often limited the Russian crews' ability to effectively defend themselves.

However, the sinking of the Project 12411 ship, to which Ivanovets belongs, alters this pattern: a warship, supposedly ready for battle and unrestricted movement, and had the opportunity to engage all its sensors, weaponry, or high speed, was successfully attacked.

Maximilian Dura from Defence 24 offers an analysis on why the Ivanovets failed to defend itself. Based on available recordings, it seems that the Russians did not activate the Monolith radar station, housed within a large dome on the superstructure and responsible for detecting air and surface targets, for some unknown reason.

This inaction led to significant repercussions. The Pechora navigational radar, which was running throughout, offers an inadequate tactical situation image and another radar - the third MR-123 - positioned on the mast, is not for detecting threats, but for directing weaponry towards previously detected targets. Its antenna remained stationary during the attack - the ship did not detect any threats that the MR-123 could guide the weaponry towards.

This inability to detect threats hindered the use of the primary AK-176 76 mm calibre gun (which remained unused during the defence), and firepower from the automatic 30-mm AK-630 guns had limited impact when the Ukrainians conducted a synchronised attack using at least eight kamikaze units.

The ship also failed to utilise its speed – if it had reached a full 77.78 km/h, or approximately 48.39 mph, it could have feasibly escaped the attacking drones. Although thermographic images of the turbine outlets show that they were functioning at high power, they did not manage to accelerate the ship quickly enough, and the initial hit made escape impossible.

The reason why the Ivanovets was sailing without an activated radar remains uncertain. The author of the analysis implies that it could have been due to the Russians' dismissal of the problem or high morale of the crew manning the ship without readiness for action.