The self-destruction of a Ukrainian USV, most likely a Sargan-3000 in the electronic warfare version, belonging to the Ukrain’s Navy, in the port of the Romanian city of Constanta on the morning of Friday, June 5, posed one very key question to the Romanians – how did this even become possible.
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To understand the complexity of the situation, we must first reconstruct the course of events. At about 6:00 AM EEST, the Ukrainian Navy lost control of its USV. At 06:20 AM EEST it was discovered near berth No. 78 by employees of the Romanian sea rescue agency, whose premises are located on this berth.
Around 10:00 AM EEST, as reported in Bucharest, Ukraine warned that the USV had a self-destruct mechanism. At 10:25 AM EEST a self-destruct signal was recorded, and three minutes later at 10:28 AM EEST the USV exploded.
Also at that time there were three more USVs in the sea, which also self-destructed.
As noted by the Ukrainian Navy, the cause of the loss of control of the USV was the impact of russian electronic warfare equipment. There were no casualties in this incident.
But the question of "how this became possible", which was formulated by Defense Romania, is that the USV made a rather complicated path through the seaport with several maneuvers. Initially, it entered the port from the south, passing by the piers. Then – it maneuvered and got into the inner northern part of the bay, turned left and hit berth No. 78.
If the USV had gone further, it could have crashed into an oil terminal or a nitrogen fertilizer warehouse, which made the consequences of its explosion much more threatening. In general, the naval drone covered more than 6.5 kilometers in the waters of the Constanta port, and it is not excluded that these maneuvers could have been the result of targeted actions of russian electronic warfare equipment on the navigation systems of the Ukrainian USV. But even this is not the most important thing.
"It is difficult to ignore the fact that such a USV managed to cross a strategically important port area without being detected or neutralized in time," Defense Romania draws attention. The Romanian publication states that Romania has demonstrated its inability to prevent such incidents.
As Defense Romania writes, "this incident raises serious questions about the security of the port of Constanta, an important logistics hub and at the same time a vulnerable area, where over time numerous suspicions of illegal activities have arisen, from arms and drug smuggling to billions of dollars in tax evasion."
It should be noted that it is one thing when we are talking about a Ukrainian USV that went out of control for technical reasons, while quite another thing when we are talking about the threat of a targeted attack by russia on the port infrastructure of Romania, as a NATO country.
It is worth recalling that on the night of May 29, a russian Shahed-type strike UAV hit a multi-story residential building in the Romanian city of Galati.
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