Ukrainian Drone Boats in the Black Sea Save Odesa

This article appeared previously on Warrior Maven, a Military Content Group member website. 

Since some of the earliest months of the Russia-Ukraine war, surface drone boats off the shore of Ukraine have been targeting Russian ships and defending port cities and key coastal areas from amphibious attacks, a substantial development potentially of great significance given that Russia launched an amphibious attack at the beginning of the war.

As far back as several years ago, Pentagon officials confirmed that indeed US Unmanned Surface Vessels were being sent to Ukraine.

Unmanned Surface Vessels to Ukraine

“They’re designed to help Ukraine with its coastal defense needs. And I think I’m just going to leave it at that. I’m not going to get into the specific capabilities, but they’re designed to help Ukraine with its coastal defense needs,” a Pentagon spokesman old reporters in 2022, according to a Pentagon transcript.

This appears to have been an extremely significant development in a number of key respects, given the known performance abilities of these kinds of small drone boats. It is unclear just how sophisticated the ones they sent were in terms of autonomy, yet at the very least, they are certain to have helped with both surveillance and targeting. The drones can easily be teleoperated by Ukrainian forces conducting Command and Control from the shore.

This appears to be precisely what happened, according to many accounts of successful Ukrainian drone-boat Kamikaze attacks on Russian ships off the coast of Odesa. The attack drones appear to have been operating in close coordination with land-based command and control utilizing various networking technologies for targeting. The potential scenario surrounding the Kamikaze attacks was described in Naval News by a retired Navy Admiral. (Mr. Hasan Özyurt, (R) Rear Admiral)

“Suppose Ukraine has intelligence indicating the potential location of targets in a specific region. In this case, the planning should consider factors such as USV range, transit speed, weather and sea conditions in the target area, and the preference for conducting the transit and the attack under night conditions. With the attack locations being 125 to 150 nautical miles away from Odesa, kamikaze USVs must have started their transit at least 4-6 hours before the attack,” the retired Admiral writes in Naval News.

Also, the drone boats may have been operating with various levels of autonomy, bringing a range of yet-to-exist tactical advantages. USVs, whether they are armed or unarmed, can perform both offensive and defensive roles, something which continues to be rapidly developed by the US Navy.

Certainly, on the defensive side, the drone boats likely gave Ukrainian forces along the coastline a beyond-the-horizon surveillance node able to “sense, see and detect” approaching Russian ships and even provide early warning of an amphibious attack. This potentially appears to have been crucial as it could have enabled Ukrainian ground forces an opportunity to consolidate defenses and mass firepower along the coast to target approaching Russian ships.

The USV drone boats have the technology to share data and possibly even stream real-time sensor video between one another and back to Ukrainians performing command and control on the shore. Should Ukrainians know the location of attacking Russian ships, they could target them from shore or launch aircraft to attack them.

At the same time, the USVs might have offered an equal or better opportunity to conduct offensive operations as they could perform forward “node” targeting missions for coastal weapons such as anti-ship missiles. Land-fired Ukrainian cruise missiles were effective at targeting Russian warships earlier in the war, a tactical advantage likely made possible by surface drones being used for targeting. Clearly, forward-operating USVs off the Ukrainian coast likely helped “pinpoint” Russian ships for attack from beyond the visible horizon.

There certainly is reason to believe that the Ukrainian coastline along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov was likely of great risk, given the range of ship-fired weapons Russian warships are known to operate and the essential “absence” of a Ukrainian Navy. At the time of the arrival of the drone boats, Pentagon officials were clear that Russia had blockaded Odesa. For months earlier in the war, the Russian Navy was able to prevent Odesa from economic activity, trade, and ability to transit maritime traffic in and out of Odesa, Pentagon officials said.

Ukrainian Sea drones could have proved critical along the coastal areas of the Black Sea, something of great consequence to the war effort given that key NATO countries such as Romania and Bulgaria border the Black Sea just South of Odesa.