The incident marks the second confirmed time an attack with multiple kamikaze USVs sank a Russian warship. Previously, the Russian Tarantul-class corvette RFS Ivanovets was sunk with a coordinated attack.
The difficulties with detecting and engaging kamikaze USVs have caused significant causalities to the Russian Navy. The small size and high speed are the main contributing factors to this situation. Russian warships’ main self-defence consists of manually operated heavy machine guns and CIWS like AK-630, both inadequate in terms of target acquisition capabilities against kamikaze USVs.
The past kamikaze USV attacks of the Ukraine consisted of one or very few USVs at a time. The two recent attacks make the danger of swarm kamikaze USVs even more evident. Swarming large ships increases the danger in different ways, like worse odds for the defender and increasing the damage by striking the same areas, as demonstrated in the attack against RFS Ivanovets.
This highlights the importance of ensuring the effectors have 360-degree coverage when developing a countermeasure complex against this new threat, aside from optimizing detection capabilities.
The continued vulnerability of the Russian Navy ships against the kamikaze USV threat suggests that events like this will keep occurring soon.
