Design of the 956 Sovremenny fire support ship began in 1971. The change in the purpose of the ship during the design process was caused by the US program to create a new generation of Spruens-class destroyers - the first multipurpose ships of the US Navy. So, in addition to artillery weapons, air defense was significantly strengthened, a new anti-ship missile system 3M80 Mosquito was adopted. But the enormous size of the new SJSC "Polynom" and the lack of any reserves on the ship, which were previously spent on powerful artillery weapons, prevented them from becoming at the same level as their foreign counterparts. The superiority was only in artillery and air defense systems, otherwise the "956 Sovremenny" was losing. In connection with such circumstances, the idea of creating a system of two ships appeared: the specialized ship PLO 1155 Udaloy and the ship URO and air defense "956 Sovremenny". In fact, it was planned to joint actions of groups 1155 Udaloy and "956 Sovremenny", the construction of 50 ships of these projects.
As a power plant, it was decided to use a GTU, since YuTZ will not provide the program for the construction of all ships with turbines. In addition, in case of difficulty with diesel fuel, the fleet will have ships that use crude oil or fuel oil. Despite many features of the gas turbine operation, the solution has been implemented. However, the peculiarities of the operation of the gas turbine plant with even more stressed boilers were not taken into account.
The installation required qualified maintenance during operation and scarce consumables, with which problems could arise in the fleet. The violation of the operating rules resulted in accidents that caused distrust of these installations.
Information about the objectives of the combat control system can be received from the active and passive sensors of the ship, from patrol aircraft, other ships of the formation, as well as via communication channels from the ship's helicopter. The multi-channel defensive control system is capable of tracking and hitting multiple targets simultaneously.
According to the 956E project, two ships were built for China.
