Ukraine’s sea drones display new capability to shoot down helicopters

Ukraine has been showcasing its navy’s growing capabilities with a fleet of sea drones that is playing a key role in the latest phase of its war with Russia.

The maritime drones have allowed Kyiv to tackle Russia in the Black Sea around Crimea, with less risk to its troops, according to experts.

The drones have now been spotted with anti-helicopter missiles, offering a new method of warfare that saw Russian forces lose a naval helicopter late last week.

The Russian navy Ka-29 Helix-B assault helicopter was shot down near the city of Anapa along the Black Sea, during what Russian and Ukrainian military officials say was a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack on Friday night.

It remains unclear if the helicopter was shot down by the Ukrainian drones or by Russia’s own air defences, but the attack marks a fresh blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s diminishing fleet of aircraft and warships along the Black Sea.

“Since February 2022, Ukraine has successfully denied Russia dominance of the Black Sea,” Olena Borodyna, a senior geopolitical transition risk adviser at think-tank ODI, told i. “Sea drones have been playing a key role in Ukraine’s operations, with some of the main benefits being that it allows Ukraine reach into Russian-controlled territorial waters around the peninsula while putting fewer army personnel at risk.”

Russia was able to successfully control the Black Sea and block vital exports of Ukrainian grain at the beginning of the war, before Ukraine launched its first successful naval drone attack in October 2022, when its armed forces damaged three ships and port facilities in the north-western part of the Black Sea.

Explosion on what Ukrainian military intelligence said is the Russian Black Sea Fleet patrol ship Sergey Kotov that was damaged by Ukrainian sea drones, at a location given as off the coast of Crimea, in March (Photo: Reuters)

The Russian defence ministry said seven USVs (unmanned surface vehicles) were involved in the attack with support of eight UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), while the US Naval Institute reported that for the first time, the Russian navy became aware of its vulnerability along the Black Sea, “causing it to retreat further into its shell, increasing defences and reducing activity outside”.

This came after five sea drones were used in the audacious attack on the Crimean bridge, attacking the critical infrastructure that severed the region’s links to Russia, while another USV attack occurred in mid-November 2022 in Novorossiysk that took out a Russian warship.

According to UK intelligence, Mr Putin has lost 25 per cent of Russia’s vessels in the Black Sea, while Ukraine puts that number even higher as the president has been forced into retreating some of Russia’s ships from the port of Sevastopol in southern Crimea.

The architect of Ukraine’s adaptable sea drone technology is Brig-Gen Ivan Lukashevych of the Security Service, the country’s main internal security and intelligence agency.

Under his watch, Ukraine adapted their drone technology after the country was left without a conventional navy when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.

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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he laid out details of Ukrainian operations and plans to develop the boats that have diminished Russia’s expansive military with cheap but hard to detect drones.

This includes the use of explosive-packed “suicide” undersea marine drones, which destroyed a Russian missile ship in February.

Ukraine has made extensive use of the experimental weapons, producing several canoe-shaped iterations including the “Toloka” and the “Marichka”, said to be around six metres long with a range of 600 miles.

New versions of the crafts have the capability to fire seaborne missiles, which Ukraine has also developed over the course of the war, as well as crash into enemy ships.

Last month, the Security Service of Ukraine’s Sea Baby naval drones were equipped with Grad multiple launch rocket systems. On Monday, they struck Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit in occupied Mykolaiv region, an official said.

According to Brig-Gen Lukashevych, Ukraine is now seeking to create squads of 10 to 20 drones with separate functions that combine to replicate the capabilities of a single warship. “We are doing many things that no one in the world has done,” he said.

Ms Borodyna said: “The success of the Ukrainian navy has spotlighted Russia’s naval vulnerabilities.

“Ukraine’s successful use of sea drones and innovation in military technologies also helps to showcase the country’s prowess and position as a worldwide defence tech hub.”