The world's naval powers have their eyes on Ukraine.
How can a country with only a handful of small warships defeat powerful Russia in the Black Sea?
With minimal investment, the Ukrainian Armed Forces claim to have disabled a third of the invasion fleet in the Black Sea.
At least 12 ships and a submarine have been destroyed or damaged: these are the cases for which EL PAÍS has found visual evidence, although Kiev raises the number to 25. The last two successful attacks, this February, sank the corvette
Ivanovets
and the
César Kunikov
landing ship
with a tactic coordinated to the millimeter with swarms of nautical drones.
The
Ivanovets
was, along with the
Admiral Makarov frigate,
the reference ship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea since April 2022, when a Neptune anti-ship missile sank the cruiser
Moskva
.
The Neptunes are Ukrainian-made, but their number is limited, as the Ministry of Defense has admitted, due to the complexity of producing them during the war due to the large infrastructure required and the threat of bombing by the invader of the production center.
The Ukrainian army has prioritized converting the few units it has into medium-range missiles against ground targets in Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by the Kremlin in 2014 and the base of its fleet in the Black Sea.
Much cheaper and easier to produce are the marine bomb drones with which the
Ivanovets
corvette and the
Caesar Kunikov
were destroyed .
Between the start of the invasion, in February 2022, and autumn 2023, the Ukrainian budget to produce its drones, in secret underground locations, would have been 30 million euros.
The data was provided by NATO sources to Lee Willett, a researcher at the Royal Swedish Society for Nautical Studies, in an analysis published in November 2023. It is less than half of what it costs to build the
Ivanovets
[70 million euros], as indicated by the Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Defense (GUR).
Sidharth Kaushal, a researcher at the RUSI (British Defense Studies Institute), summarized in a study this February how incredibly affordable the assembly of these drones is – on the scale of the arms industry: “They are easy to build, equipped with electro-optical and infrared sensors, a Starlink antenna [satellite communication system] and other commercial components such as recreational boat engines.”
Experts emphasize that the Ukrainians are not the first to develop marine drones, even at low cost and in an almost artisanal way.
Yemen's Houthi rebels, for example, attacked the Saudi frigate
Al-Madinah
in 2017 .
But the Ukrainians are “pioneers” in the systematic and effective use of these devices, according to a study last October by the American RAND center.
The first Ukrainian attack with nautical drone bombs is far away, in October 2022. It was a combined attack with unmanned aerial vehicles against two frigates (including the
Admiral Makarov
) and a minesweeper in the Bay of Sevastopol.
All three ships were damaged, but could be restored.
The level of effectiveness on the part of the Ukrainian forces has since taken a dizzying leap.
The sinking of
the
Ivanovets
February 1 and
Caesar Kunikov
on February 14 are proof of this.
Both attacks followed the same parameters.
Swarms of at least six Magura drones, controlled 300 kilometers away by GUR special forces, were launched against the two ships.
In both cases they were anchored in closed bays, a short distance from the coast.
Both RAND analysts and Kaushal agree that unmanned devices are more effective when they do not have targets in the open sea where the ship has more maneuverability and where the rougher water destabilizes the drones.
The
Caesar Kunikov
and the
Ivanovets
were initially static targets with part of their escape routes closed by land.
like a pack of wolves
Defense Express
, a Ukrainian media specialized in military analysis, detailed this February the tactics of these Magura swarms.
The videos provided by the GUR of the two attacks show the operation, with images recorded by drones, which evoke the teamwork of a pack of wolves stalking their prey.
The drones first try to hit the rudder, so that the ship loses the ability to maneuver.
The only thing left for the crew at that moment is to try to defeat the drones with the machine guns on board.
But the Maguras can navigate at 40 kilometers per hour and, as can be seen in the videos, the drone pilots do not follow fixed trajectories.
One of the drones finally manages to hit the hull of the ship and that is where the next drones will aim, because they inflict more damage where a hole has already been opened.
Not only that, as
Defense Express
indicated : the Ukrainians are looking precisely for the points where they know the ship's ammunition is stored, causing a larger explosion.
Ukraine has managed to get most of the Russian fleet to leave the Crimean peninsula to retreat to Novorossiysk, on the Russian coast of the Krasnodar province, 550 kilometers from free Ukraine.
The GUR even claims that the enemy has moved vessels to Ochamchira, on the coast of Georgia, a region illegally separated in 2008 with Russian military intervention.
Despite this, the nautical drones of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) managed to hit the landing ship
Olenegorskiy Gornyak
in the port of Novorossiysk in August 2023 .
It was not specified which device was used, but the SBU operates with two models named Cosaco Mamai.
and Sea Baby
.
The latter, which has a rocket launcher, was successfully used in July 2023 to attack the Kerch bridge, which connects Crimea with Russia.
Cossack Mamai is, according to Ukrainian experts, the fastest military vehicle in service in the Black Sea, with a top speed of 110 kilometers per hour.
Kaushal warns in his study that it is too early to know how long Ukraine will have the advantage of these nautical drones, because military technology is advancing rapidly, both in offensive and defensive strategy.
Already in World War II, multiple anti-submarine systems were successfully developed, Kaushal recalls.
And the invasion of Ukraine has shown that the Russian state is capable of progress.
In the first year of the war, the Ukrainians were far superior in the use of bomb drones and commercial aerial unmanned vehicles adapted for combat.
Russia now has clear dominance in this area.
The RUSI researcher concedes that nautical drones will always have the factor of surprise in their favor, because they are very difficult to detect by radar.
Ukraine has so far managed to keep Russian ships away from its waters, open a new maritime export route and reduce the threat of the launch of Kalibr cruise missiles by the Kremlin fleet.
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