In a difficult year on land, drones are giving Ukraine some success at sea
Bouncing over choppy waters, the Ukrainian naval drones fanned out and raced toward the Russian warship in a swarm tactic that military experts say has proven deadly and effective against what had been a dominant naval power on the Black Sea.
From the safety of a room hundreds of miles away, the drone pilots pushed the joysticks forward to accelerate, steer and rotate the deck-mounted cameras while keeping their target in sight. Russian sailors opened fire with heavy machine guns.
According to a report from the Ukrainian drone operators, a brief naval battle broke out between men and drones for several minutes. One drone flew so close to its target, they said, that when the bullets struck the 500-pound warhead it was carrying, the explosion pierced the hull of the Russian corvette patrol ship. Sergei Kotov.
“When we hit the target, the whole team was obviously filled with emotion,” said the drone operator. The pilot asked to be identified only by the nickname Thirteen as he described the battle at sea on September 14, one of dozens of such battles over the past year, according to the Ukrainian military, using drones built by Ukraine.
Such attacks have been a rare bright spot in a disappointing year for Ukraine, which has seen no frontline breakthrough on the ground.
“We were shouting and congratulating each other,” the pilot said, describing the mood among drone operators in September. (The Russian Defense Ministry said at the time that the Sergei Kotov had thwarted an attack by five maritime drones.)
The use of the naval drones highlights a path forward for Ukraine in its battle with Russia, which has been promoted by the White House and embraced by Ukraine’s leaders. The idea is to supplement the weapons of Western partners with weapons produced domestically by Ukraine, including innovative systems such as the fleet of naval drones.
Ukraine will have to rely heavily on military aid for the foreseeable future in a lopsided war against Russia, a much more populous enemy with a much greater industrial capacity. Much of that aid is now in doubt because the US Congress postponed a vote on military aid.
Faced with such obstacles, the Biden administration is promoting joint ventures between U.S. and Ukrainian weapons manufacturers. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who has promoted Ukraine as a “hub” for weapons production and battlefield testing, met with top executives of US military contractors during a visit to Washington last week.
Some in the U.S. military want Ukraine to pursue a “hold-and-build” strategy — to focus on holding the territory it has now and building a capability to produce its own weapons over the course of 2024.
With the Ukrainian offensive stalled and little chance of advancing on land, the goal would be to create enough of a credible threat with long-range drones and missiles that there would be an opportunity for meaningful negotiations with Russia by the end of next year. or in 2025.
The White House said in a statement after convening a conference this month on Ukraine’s domestic defense industry that the goal was to “promote a robust and self-sustaining Ukrainian defense industrial base that reflects Ukraine’s innovative culture and supplies material for urgent military needs.” The Foreign Ministry would send an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to monitor cooperation, the statement said.
Vast military factories in Ukraine were once a cornerstone of the Soviet military industry, building aircraft and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Many of these were forgotten at the end of the Cold War and when Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union.
Still, domestic weapons manufacturers have supplied about 20 percent of the Ukrainian military’s needs since the Russian invasion in February 2022, according to Serhiy Hrabsky, a military analyst who was a colonel in the army.
Ukraine makes armored vehicles and tanks, a self-propelled howitzer, artillery shells and laser-guided anti-tank missiles. However, the greatest potential is seen in testing innovative systems that can surpass older military equipment, military experts say.
Exploding naval drones, a new class of naval weapons, were used for the first time in combat to defend against Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Kiev operates two production programs, one under the military intelligence service and the other under the direction of the domestic intelligence service.
The Ukrainian military this month made a pilot available for an interview and allowed a tour of a drone workshop and storage site, with a requirement that the location not be made public. The intent, military intelligence said, was to demonstrate Ukrainian self-reliance even as Congress considers whether to provide more military aid to Ukraine.
In the year since they took off in the Black Sea, the drones have damaged and sunk dozens of Russian ships, according to the Ukrainian Navy, and, in addition to Western-supplied missiles, have played a role in forcing Russia to release ships move the port of Sevastopol. home to one of Moscow’s four naval fleets. The drones helped clear a shipping channel for the export of grain, a crucial commodity for the Ukrainian economy. And they forced Russian missile carriers to fly further from the Ukrainian coast, further alerting air defense forces to attacks. Ukraine does not disclose the size of its drone fleet.
“No one has as much experience using marine drones as we do,” said Thirteen, the drone pilot, who showed up for the interview wearing a ski mask for safety reasons. “There are no instructors, no textbooks. We are writing these books now.”
In a darkened warehouse were dozens of speedboats painted gray and black, making them harder to spot at sea and resting on dollies at night in various stages of assembly.
Some were equipped only with cameras for reconnaissance, others were built with mechanisms to drop mines in the path of Russian ships. Most were equipped with triggers on their noses – three small rubber balls on springs – to detonate explosives.
Using satellite links, the pilots in the war room use consoles to control the drones, which are designed to attack in swarms of about six, increasing the chances of sending defense mechanisms, such as deck-mounted machine guns, towards the hulls of Russian to penetrate ships.
The last successful naval drone strike for defense intelligence was on Nov. 10, when a swarm struck two Russian landing ships moored in a bay in Crimea, sinking both, the program’s operators said in interviews .
Russia has responded with electronic jamming, placing booms over the mouths of ports, mounting machine guns on its warships and sailing out of range of the drones. “With every new operation, we learn and they learn,” Thirteen said.
Naval warfare scholars say the Ukrainian models have shown how smaller armies can defend coastal waters with drones.
The drones won’t replace large surface ships anytime soon, said Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow and expert on naval power at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
But “the ability to harass and significantly damage disproportionately priced ships is an impressive return on investment,” Mr. Kaushal said in a telephone interview.
Ukrainian naval drones, said Thirteen, the pilot who helped cripple the Sergey Kotov, have cleared a swath up to about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the Ukrainian coast. “It is possible to push them back,” he said. “Russia’s rule on the Black Sea is over.”
Maria Varenikova reporting contributed.