Innovative Ukrainian Naval Tactics Largely Nullify Russia’s Black Sea Superiority

Executive Summary:

• Since February 2022, the Ukrainian Navy has demonstrated its ability to counter the world’s supposed third-best military through innovative weaponry and unmanned naval drones.
• The use of unmanned systems, particularly drones, has emerged as a critical element in modern naval warfare, with both Ukraine and Russia rapidly advancing their technologies to counter each other.
• The ongoing conflict in the Black Sea serves as a testing ground for future naval warfare, demonstrating the evolving nature of unmanned weaponry and informing foreign states of how to revise their maritime defense strategies.

On August 2, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that it had again attacked and, this time, destroyed the Rostov-na-Donu Kilo-class attack submarine in Sevastopol, one of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s (BSF) four Kilo-class submarines capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles (Ukrainska Pravda, August 3). The submarine’s destruction leaves the BSF with only the B-265 Krasnodar, B-268 Velikii Novgorod, and K-271 Kolpino as submarines capable of carrying Kalibr cruise missiles, torpedoes, and naval mines. As the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine wages on, Russia is still considered to have the world’s third-most powerful navy after the United States and China. While the ground war has turned attritional, the maritime situation is different. In the three years since Putin began his war, Ukraine has damaged, destroyed, or sunk at least 15 BSF warships and auxiliaries (see EDM, September 26, November 15, 2023, January 17, March 11, 26). Ukrainian unmanned naval drones have proven to be an elusive and persistent threat, reaching Russian targets hundreds of nautical miles from Ukrainian-controlled shores. By developing innovative weaponry allied to guerrilla naval tactics to contest Russia’s “command of the sea,” the Ukrainian Navy has managed several unexpected successes, highlighting the increasingly important role of unmanned systems in modern naval warfare.

Ukraine’s first major blow to the Russian Navy came two months after Russian President Vladimir Putin began his full-scale invasion on February 21, 2022. Ukraine sank the BSF flagship Moskva on April 13, 2022, with two R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles (Ukrainska Pravda, December 13, 2022). Five months later, on September 13, Ukraine used unmanned naval drones to severely damage a Ropucha-class landing ship in Sevastopol, the first time in the history of naval warfare that a “sea drone” had struck and heavily damaged an enemy vessel (Bagnet, September 13, 2023). The attack also severely damaged the Rostov-na-Donu Kilo-class attack submarine in drydock (Ukrainska Pravda, September 18, 2023).

These successes are all the more remarkable given the Ukrainian Navy’s parlous state as the war began. Less than a week after it started, the navy’s flagship, the elderly Soviet-era Het’man Sahaidachnii frigate, was scuttled to prevent it from falling into Russian hands (Ukrainska Pravda, March 4, 2022). With no significant surface fleet left, the Ukrainians began to innovate with a vengeance, concentrating on developing small and fast uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) with a low radar profile and significantly explosive payload (see EDM, July 25, 2022, June 13, 2023). Ukraine’s development and use of naval drones began with a prototype tested in June 2022 after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tasked the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) with finding a way to end Russian dominance of the Black Sea and create operationally favorable conditions for Ukraine’s grain export corridor (Ukrainska Pravda, March 4, 2022; see EDM, September 13, November 3, 2022).

Over two years later, on May 23, 2024, SBU head Vasyl Maliuk announced that the security services were the first to use “Sea Baby” surface drones in their special operations (Sluzhba bezpeki Ukraini, May 23). Ukraine’s USVs have even been versatile enough to be used against terrestrial targets. In July 2023, during Ukraine’s first attack on the Kerch Bridge, two Sea Baby drones hit the bridge, completely destroying one section of the bridge and damaging the other (UNIAN, November 25, 2023).  

The SBU now deploys three types of drones: Sea Baby, Kozak Mamai, and the MAGURA V5, named after the goddess of war and victory in Slavic mythology. These are smaller, faster, and much more maneuverable than other similar drones. They are designed solely as “pure hunters” of warships, and SBU specialists constantly work to improve them in conjunction with the Ukrainian Navy (Suspil’nie Krim, March 4).

The BSF’s response to the Ukrainian naval drones has been to shift warships eastward to Novorossiysk and northward into the Sea of Azov. Moscow hopde to lengthen the Ukrainian Navy’s operational lines while providing more in-depth defense on harbors than operations in the open sea. By the spring of 2024, then-British Secretary of State for Defense Grant Shapps lauded the new drones’ effectiveness and declared that Russia’s BSF was now “functionally inactive” (Telegraph.co.uk, March 25). On July 15, the BSF’s last corvette in Sevastopol sailed for Novorossiysk. Ukrainian Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk noted the withdrawal, adding that while Russia kept several auxiliary vessels at Sevastopol, they did not carry offensive weaponry (Suspil’nie Krim, July 16).

On July 17, Zelenskyy signed Ukraine’s new maritime strategy, “On the Maritime Security Strategy of Ukraine,” into law (President of Ukraine, July 17). The strategy seeks “the transformation of Ukraine into a powerful sea and river state, development of naval potential sufficient to deter potential aggressors from sea and river directions, [and] restoration and development of sea and river potential of Ukraine.” Most ominously for Russia, the strategy seeks “the development of cooperation with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states, conducting exercises, maneuvers, and other joint events, {and] ensuring the permanent presence of alliance forces in the Black Sea.”

Ukraine’s new maritime strategy provoked a tart response from Russia. On July 18, Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov warned, “Of course, Russia will take all necessary measures to ensure its own security” (Gazeta.ru, July 18).

Twice in the past two years, Ukraine has bombed the land link between the Crimean Peninsula and mainland Russia (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, August 18, 2023). The two-track rail line is so shaky that the Russian Army has stopped using it to send trains loaded with heavy equipment, tanks, and ammunition. To defend the 11-mile bridge from kamikaze sea drones, Russia has placed booms, barriers, barges, and steel nets in the area. With US-supplied tactical cruise missiles capable of reaching all of Crimea, this analyst believes that Ukraine simply is waiting for an auspicious date—perhaps Ukrainian Independence Day on August 24—to finish off the $3.7 billion bridge, a pet project of Putin.

The Ukrainian military has not forgotten about the Kerch Bridge. On August 2, during the broadcasting of the Edini novini telethon, Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said that the Ukrainian military remains focused on destroying the bridge. He told the audience, “Everyone is working. And they are working on long shots, on this. All this requires a complex solution” (New Voice of Ukraine, August 2).

Even Putin has acknowledged the threat that Ukraine’s naval drones represent. Addressing a meeting on June 26 about developing Russian shipbuilding, he noted, “To increase the combat stability of the fleet forces, it is necessary to pay special attention to the speedy introduction of systems for remote detection of threats, including from unmanned aerial vehicles. I am referring not only to the control of airspace by air defense systems but also to the improvement of surface and underwater surveillance systems for the fight against enemy naval robotic systems” (Kremlin.ru, June 24).

Unmanned systems are certain to play an important role in naval warfare in the future. In the Black Sea, both Ukraine and Russia are racing to improve their technology. The Ukrainians are routinely unveiling more modern and capable drones, while the Russians are continuously improving their defensive capabilities to counter this threat. Other countries are learning lessons from the Black Sea. Predicting the future is murky at best, but Ukrainian inventiveness has stymied a superior enemy’s “command of the sea,” an extraordinary development that all significant maritime powers, led by Putin’s Russia, will be forced to consider as they refine their own naval doctrines.