Sea drones could 'radically' change warfare, giving smaller navies a chance to 'flip the chessboard,' expert says

Thibault Spirlet
·2 min read

  • Ukraine has used sea drones to devastating effect against Russia's far superior Black Sea Fleet.

  • Drones could 'radically' change naval warfare, Pavlo Lakiychuk told the Kyiv Independent.

  • He said they pose a threat to larger navies and give smaller navies a chance to turn the tide.

Sea drones could radically change naval warfare, giving smaller navies a chance to "flip the chessboard," a retired Ukrainian naval officer told the Kyiv Independent.

Pavlo Lakiychuk told the outlet that sea drones present a "serious" threat to modern navies, which have spent billions creating enormous, supposedly "impenetrable killing" weapons.

For those nations that lack the resources to create their own large, ocean-going fleets, "this is a chance to flip the chessboard," he added.

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine has made significant strides in naval warfare, upgrading its naval drones, innovating their use, and deploying them to devastating effect against Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

It needed to look to solutions like this because it doesn't have a navy of its own.

In February, the UK's Ministry of Defence said Ukraine had "almost certainly" sunk the Russian corvette Ivanovets using naval drones.

They also played a key role in taking out an estimated third of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, the UK MOD said a month later.

In addition, Ukraine has used them to lay mines, which to date have damaged four Russian warships in the Black Sea, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Brig Gen Ivan Lukashevych, the mastermind behind Ukraine's fleet of naval drones, told The Journal that Ukraine now aims to deploy squads of up to 20 sea drones that can replicate the abilities of a single warship.

At the same time, The Financial Times' Ukraine correspondent said in an X post in May that Sea Baby naval drones, one of the main drones Ukraine has used at sea, are being mounted with Grad multiple-launch rocket systems, citing an unnamed Ukrainian intelligence official.

The official said they'd been used to strike Russian positions in occupied Mykolaiv.

In his comments to the Kyiv Independent, Lakiychuk said that Ukraine's naval drones have "caught the Russian fleet by surprise."

He added that "the era of unmanned robotic systems is coming," and that sooner or later they "will send modern colossi to the dustbin of history."

In that situation, he said, "the Russian Black Sea Fleet is no longer a survivor."

Read the original article on Business Insider