Ukraine's Sea Drones are Getting Crazy

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Video originally published on June 22, 2024.

This analysis examines Ukraine's Sea Drones are Getting Crazy in historical and strategic context. It traces how the core developments unfolded, which institutions and actors shaped outcomes, and what those decisions changed on the ground. Rather than repeating headline-level claims, it focuses on concrete mechanisms, constraints, and tradeoffs that explain the trajectory of events. The discussion moves from Key Developments through Strategic Implications to Risk and Uncertainty, then evaluates wider consequences. The goal is to clarify not only what happened, but why these developments still matter for current planning, risk assessment, and policy decisions.

Key Takeaways

On October 29, 2022, Ukraine launched a coordinated attack using seven small maritime drones against Russian ships in the Sevastopol naval harbor.
The Ukrainian sea drones, likely using Starlink internet communications technology, operated in coordination with aerial drones and made contact with at least two ships, a minesweeper vessel and a frigate.
The Mykola sea drone, used in the Sevastopol attack, can carry up to 200 kilograms of explosives, travel at speeds of up to 43 knots, and has a range of up to 800 kilometers.
Ukraine has developed various sea drones, including the Magura, which can carry 320 kilograms of explosives, travel at speeds of up to 42 knots, and has a range of 450 nautical miles.
The Magura sea drone is made of plastic, making it nearly invisible to radar, and costs considerably under $300,000, making it a cost-effective option for Ukraine's naval defense.
Ukraine's sea drones have been used to attack Russian vessels far from Ukraine's territory, and have been equipped with various payloads, including anti-aircraft missiles.

Key Developments

Perhaps it's the stakes that come with an enemy figuring out a new technology before you do; maybe it's a vast military-industrial complex playing on the fears of a government and its people, or maybe it's a testament to humanity's immense capacity to perform under pressure…but the results are undeniable. When, in early 2022, columns of Russian tanks and soldiers streamed en masse into Ukraine, no amount of desperate innovation was expected to stand against the coming onslaught. Yet out of the crucible that is the Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukrainian inventors and builders on the home front have produced a piece of tech that's proven nothing short of an equalizer, in the realm where the nation was expected to be most horribly outmatched. The technology in question is the sea drone, properly known as either the unmanned surface vehicle or USV, or the unmanned underwater vehicle or UUV. And Ukraine isn't just churning out carbon-copies of the same single sea drone, either; instead, they've created a whole mess of them, and some of what they're making, is getting wild. The Tech. No discussion of Ukraine's crazy sea drones is complete without having the answer to one basic question: Why does Ukraine need maritime drones in the first place? The reason for Ukraine's urgent need traces back to Russia's considerable naval power, and specifically, the extreme disparity between the assets that Russia could leverage on the water, and what Ukraine had in its arsenal. Although we here at Megaprojects have been known to lampoon Russia's rather silly Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier from time to time, and we've produced a video on a proposed, but conspicuously never-constructed supercarrier called the Shtorm, the reality of Russian naval power is a bit more nuanced than that. Although the aircraft carrier really isn't modern-day Russia's naval forte, the country still leverages a range oof very scary destroyers, cruisers, and frigates, along with large landing ships and ballistic-missile, cruise-missile, and nuclear attack submarines. Ukraine, by contrast, had a few piddling patrol boats and other rather inconsequential vessels at the start of the war, most of which were either scuttled, captured, or moved far away from Russian forces in an attempt not to see them blown up. Say whatever else you want about Russia's bumbling offensive on land, but very early into the conflict, Moscow had won its war in the Black Sea. Or, at least, that's what the world had presumed, until on the 29th of October, 2022, the Russian-occupied Crimean port city of Sevastopol weathered an attack unlike any other in history. On that day, seven small maritime drones, each about the size of a paddled canoe or kayak, dodged and weaved across Sevastopol's naval harbor as a group of aerial drones ran cover overhead. The sea drones operated in coordination with each other, sitting barely above the surface of the water and closing on their targets, until eventually, they made contact with at least two ships: a minesweeper vessel, and a frigate that was serving as the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet after its prior flagship, the Moskva, had been sunk by an anti-ship missile strike in April of that same year. The reason why global analysts find Ukraine's sea drones to be so incredibly effective, don't actually have much at all to do with notions that they're unbeatable fighting machines. Instead, their true value comes in the fact that even when they miss, even when they're shot at and blown up en route to a target, even when they wait at sea until their fuel runs out and they sink below the waves, Ukraine can lose a whole lot of them, and still spend far less money sinking Russian ships than Russia spent to build and maintain them. In a war where Russia leverages a far more formidable economy and a far greater capacity for large-scale construction projects, especially in the naval sphere, this is how a smaller nation like Ukraine can best level the playing field. When a Ukrainian sea drone sinks a Russian vessel, it's not just eliminating a ship for Russia to fire missiles or heavy guns, and it's not just killing dozens or even hundreds of Russian sailors. It's converting massive Russian expenditures into twisted, mangled pieces of metal on the seafloor, sinking those ships far faster, and far easier, than Russia could ever hope to replace them. By now, it should be transparently obvious that Ukraine's drones offer, at a bare minimum, a sort of technology that'll be useful for the nation over the course of its war with Russia.

Strategic Implications

No discussion of Ukraine's crazy sea drones is complete without having the answer to one basic question: Why does Ukraine need maritime drones in the first place? The reason for Ukraine's urgent need traces back to Russia's considerable naval power, and specifically, the extreme disparity between the assets that Russia could leverage on the water, and what Ukraine had in its arsenal. Although we here at Megaprojects have been known to lampoon Russia's rather silly Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier from time to time, and we've produced a video on a proposed, but conspicuously never-constructed supercarrier called the Shtorm, the reality of Russian naval power is a bit more nuanced than that. Although the aircraft carrier really isn't modern-day Russia's naval forte, the country still leverages a range oof very scary destroyers, cruisers, and frigates, along with large landing ships and ballistic-missile, cruise-missile, and nuclear attack submarines. Ukraine, by contrast, had a few piddling patrol boats and other rather inconsequential vessels at the start of the war, most of which were either scuttled, captured, or moved far away from Russian forces in an attempt not to see them blown up. Say whatever else you want about Russia's bumbling offensive on land, but very early into the conflict, Moscow had won its war in the Black Sea. In terms of its tangible impact on the target ships, the Ukrainian sea drone attack was largely inconsequential. Neither ship weathered much damage, and the Black Sea flagship, the Admiral Makarov, was able to return to its duties a few months later. But it was the first time that any nation or military force had taken the idea of an unmanned naval vessel—a concept that's been around since the fire ships of old—and been able to integrate sea drones into a coordinated attack. Packed with explosives, painted black and sitting low in the water, and probably using Starlink internet communications technology, the drones had formed a small swarm, scoring hits and causing damage against vessels that were in friendly ports, and thought to be capable of self-defense against far more intimidating adversaries. Not only that, but they'd done it at a tiny fraction of the cost Russia had expended on warships that were now rendered vulnerable, and forced to either stay under lock and key in friendly ports, or risk complete destruction against a sea drone swarm on the high seas. The drone that was utilized in the Sevastopol attack in October of 2022, would later be revealed to the world under the moniker, the 'Mykola'. Measuring a full length of five and a half meters, but sitting low and shallow in the water, the Mykola is typically painted black in order to blend in with the waves during night attacks. Comprising a hull, a motor, and a trimmed-down top compartment, the Mykola is obviously meant to be a fast boat, and it serves capably as such, hitting maximum speeds of up to 43 knots or 80 kilometers per hour, according to naval expert H. During the attack, video footage indicates that the Sea Babies split into two teams, with the first team coming in behind the Sergei Kotov, chasing it, and drawing its fire. Then, the second team attacked the Sergei Kotov's unprotected port side—but not in an effort to actually do damage. Instead, they herded the Sergei Kotov away from land and into open water, where a third pack of Sea Babies lay in wait—and it's these ones that finally scored their hits on the Sergei Kotov, sinking it, according to Ukrainian intelligence. It was an especially damaging loss for Russia because of just how modern the Sergei Kotov apparently was; it had steamed out of port for the first time in just 2021, a relatively rare feature among the vessels of Russia's naval arsenal. The Sergei Kotov wasn't the only ship to go down in that fashion this year; a second raid, also conducted by Sea Baby drones, took place on the night of February the 14th against a Russian landing ship called the Caesar Kunikov. That's a ship with a crew of 98, with the capacity to carry up to ten main battle tanks plus 340 troops, although it's unknown whether the Sergei Kotov was carrying Russian soldiers while it was on the water. That vessel, a far heavier one at 4,100 tons, was set upon by a pack of ten drones across a twenty-minute battle.

Risk and Uncertainty

Or, at least, that's what the world had presumed, until on the 29th of October, 2022, the Russian-occupied Crimean port city of Sevastopol weathered an attack unlike any other in history. On that day, seven small maritime drones, each about the size of a paddled canoe or kayak, dodged and weaved across Sevastopol's naval harbor as a group of aerial drones ran cover overhead. The sea drones operated in coordination with each other, sitting barely above the surface of the water and closing on their targets, until eventually, they made contact with at least two ships: a minesweeper vessel, and a frigate that was serving as the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet after its prior flagship, the Moskva, had been sunk by an anti-ship missile strike in April of that same year. In terms of its tangible impact on the target ships, the Ukrainian sea drone attack was largely inconsequential. Neither ship weathered much damage, and the Black Sea flagship, the Admiral Makarov, was able to return to its duties a few months later. But it was the first time that any nation or military force had taken the idea of an unmanned naval vessel—a concept that's been around since the fire ships of old—and been able to integrate sea drones into a coordinated attack. Sutton's work on cataloguing Ukraine's maritime drones, by the way, was an indispensable help in making this video, so thanks to him. The Mykola is able to carry up to 200 kilograms of explosives, enough to punch a clean hole through the hulls of smaller vessels, and they can travel for a range of up to 800 kilometers, or 430 nautical miles. They're able to work autonomously for up to sixty hours, and stream encrypted HD video on up to three streams, providing a first-person perspective to their remote operators during an attack. Because of its long range, long endurance, and sleek, nearly invisible profile when sitting low in the water, the Mykola is ideal for surprise attacks, getting to within a few nautical miles from a given target by sundown, puttering in at a slow speed with no wake and little noise, and then roaring to life in coordinated swarms with just enough space to reach maximum speed before smashing into their targets. But although the Mykola line of sea drones have become the thing people tend to picture, when thinking about Ukrainian USVs, the past few years of warfare have revealed that the Mykola was just phase one—and it's not even Ukraine's primary weapon on the high seas anymore. Instead, that honor goes to the Magura, a series of slightly larger vessels that can do just a bit more than the Mykola can. Measuring five and a half meters long, but sitting just half a meter above the waterline, the Magura is able to hit a maximum speed of 42 knots and a range of 450 nautical miles or a bit over 800 kilometers—slightly better than the Mykola, but not necessarily the sort of thing where Ukraine would need a whole new model…until we get to its two major improvements on its predecessor. After four drones went down against the ship's defenses, the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth all rammed into the hull, with the ninth even able to drive part-way through the hole that had been created for it, and detonate nearly entirely inside the vessel. The final sea drone watched the whole attack and streamed back video, eventually making an unsuccessful attack run on the tugboat that came out to save the Caesar Kunikov. The ship has since been confirmed sunk, according to both Russian and Ukrainian sources. Other Russian ships have been sunk by sea drones this year, including the missile corvette Ivanovets, and although it's as-yet unconfirmed, rumors have spread across the open-source intelligence space that a Ukrainian maritime drone armed with anti-air missiles might even have ambushed piloted military planes and shot them down as they took off from Crimea. If true, that very well could be the first sea-drone kill against an armed airplane in history. With regard to the Ivanovets, a Ukrainian sea-drone operations commander claimed that just the cost of that one sunk ship would have cost Russia more than Ukraine spent building every drone it produced in the fourteen months prior to that attack. Through all of Ukraine's successes at sea, it's important to emphasize that these combat drones are not achieving anywhere near a 100-percent kill rate.

Outlook

Packed with explosives, painted black and sitting low in the water, and probably using Starlink internet communications technology, the drones had formed a small swarm, scoring hits and causing damage against vessels that were in friendly ports, and thought to be capable of self-defense against far more intimidating adversaries. Not only that, but they'd done it at a tiny fraction of the cost Russia had expended on warships that were now rendered vulnerable, and forced to either stay under lock and key in friendly ports, or risk complete destruction against a sea drone swarm on the high seas. The drone that was utilized in the Sevastopol attack in October of 2022, would later be revealed to the world under the moniker, the 'Mykola'. Measuring a full length of five and a half meters, but sitting low and shallow in the water, the Mykola is typically painted black in order to blend in with the waves during night attacks. Comprising a hull, a motor, and a trimmed-down top compartment, the Mykola is obviously meant to be a fast boat, and it serves capably as such, hitting maximum speeds of up to 43 knots or 80 kilometers per hour, according to naval expert H. I. The first is its payload; while the Mykola could carry a respectable 200 kilograms of explosives, the Magura brings to bear 320 kilograms. Even more important, it's made out of plastic, making it nearly invisible to radar according to Ukraine itself. The Magura integrates an autopilot system, night-vision subsystems, and an onboard data hub—but it still costs a price considerably under 300,000 US dollars, just one twenty-five-hundredth of what it cost Russia to build the Moskva warship that's now projecting Russian power against some crabs on the bottom of the Black Sea. As for how many Maguras it would have taken to sink a Moskva-sized ship, it's hard to say, but we'd be willing to bet that the number is a lot closer to one, than it is to 2,500—making the drone exceptionally cost-effective for the battles it's intended to win. Then, there's Ukraine's unmanned underwater vehicles, or UUVs, of which the first indigenously designed craft revealed to the global public, was the Toloka TLK-150. Built at a hull length of 2.5 meters, the original version of the Tokola is shaped like a torpedo, capable of operating at a range of 100 kilometers and steering through the water using its horizontal stabilizers and thrusters. Agile but relatively slow, the Tokola's communications mast is the only element of the vessel to poke up out of the water, making it exceptionally hard to spot amongst the waves, while its skinny and tapered front profile make it hard to detect or shoot underneath the waterline. Future versions of the Tokola are expected to boast an operational range of up to 1,200 kilometers, bringing the entire east-west extent of the Black Sea well into the Tokola's range. One of the landing craft was a Serna-class vessel, crewed by a complement of five and able to carry a main battle tank or up to 92 troops, while the other was an Ondatra-class vessel, crewed by five and able to carry a tank or 22 troops. A Serna-class ship is believed to cost approximately seven million US dollars today, while an Ondatra-class ship is an older vessel, but still fetches a price close to a million and a half US dollars—both of these, destroyed by drones with a likely combined cost of half a million dollars or less. In 2024, news of Ukraine's sea drone exploits has kept on coming, and nowadays, news of a successful drone attack is often followed closely by details on a new tactic or approach that Ukraine has deployed for the first time in history. One such incident went down in early March, when a pack of Sea Baby drones, the 18-foot-long, 850-kilogram payload, 49-knot, and potentially even rocket-equipped advanced weapons, set upon a missile corvette in the Black Sea called the Sergei Kotov. A 1,700-ton vessel, the Sergei Kotov is a well-armed ship, traveling with eighty crew onboard and potentially even carrying an armed helicopter. But during a night attack, the satellite-controlled wolfpack of Sea Babies—which, by the way, is an incredible sentence without context—closed in and launched a coordinated attack against the Sergei Kotov.

The Crucible of War: Ukraine's Innovation Imperative

But while the Tokola may not be capable of much when it comes to speed, another Ukrainian USV has got that area handled. That would be the Mamai, unveiled near the end of 2023 after having been proven in multiple prior attacks against Russian vessels far from Ukraine's territory on land. Equipped with a planning hull, the Mamai is purportedly able to rocket itself across the waves at up to sixty knots, or 110 kilometers per hour. Fitted with an electro-optical camera ball and fitted with multiple satellite antennae, the Mamai is compact, but rises higher out of the water than Ukraine's other sea drones, likely granting itself a fuel load that would result in a very respectable range. While the drone's explosive payload capacity is currently unknown, it's marketed by Ukraine's war crowdfunding platform, United24, as, quote, “the fastest object in the Black Sea”. Per United24, the thing is even bulletproof, which, alongside its speed, grants it a level of resiliency and evasion that compensate for its decidedly un-stealthy profile. After the Mamai, we start to get into the really crazy stuff. Meet the Sea Baby, which, despite its rather adorable name, has proven itself to be the baby from hell where Russia is concerned. Coming in at a length of six meters, and sitting just point-six meters above the waterline when it's moving slowly or at rest, it's capable of hitting speeds of up to forty-nine knots, and with additional fuel onboard, it can travel up to a thousand kilometers. But its payload is the especially impressive thing about the Sea Baby, for two key reasons. On the one hand, when it's being used as a kamikaze drone like the others we've talked about thus far, the Sea Baby can carry up to 850 kilograms of explosives—more than four of the early-stage Mykola drones we talked about previously. Even better, the Sea Baby is equipped with weapons beyond just the bomb carried in its own hull. This particular drone has shown up equipped with RPV-16 thermobaric rockets, including up to six rocket tubes. Each rocket is able to fly about a kilometer, and can either be used to attack a target, defend the drone against threats, or to distract, occupy, or suppress defensive measures as the Sea Baby's internal explosives get close enough to do the real work. In addition to missiles, the Sea Baby has even been fitted out with guided-missile launchers, and a successor craft, the Improved Sea Baby or Avdiivka, can travel at an even longer range while relying on a better motor. The latest edition of the Sea Baby line, the Sea Baby 2024, boasts increased maneuverability, and can carry up to 2,200 pounds or 1,000 kilograms of explosives—all for a total cost of about 200,000 US dollars per vessel. In July of 2023, a pair of Sea Babies attacked the bridge by surprise, each carrying nearly double the explosive payload that the Mamai drone had used to bring down the landing ship a few weeks later. That payload, by the way, came out to 850 kilograms of explosives per drone, or 1,700 kilograms in total. The hits weren't nearly enough to bring the entire bridge down, but they were nonetheless a tangible blow to Russia in a symbolic sense, and the explosions were large enough to kill two civilians traveling the bridge, a couple from Russia's Belgorod region who were traveling with their teenage daughter to go vacationing. Alongside the two civilians dead and their daughter wounded, video indicated that part of the Kerch bridge's road component had been sheared off. Toward the end of 2023, Kyiv was even able to score a double kill with its sea drones, in a pair of attacks against landing ships in port on the Crimean peninsula. Footage of the attack, released by Ukraine, clearly shows an attack by at least three sea drones, a minimum of two of which impacted their intended targets. Although it was a relatively small attack, it was able to have a major impact; satellite imagery shared by Ukraine after the incident indicated that both landing vessels had sunk by the time satellite imagery was taken. Try as Moscow might, it can't seem to achieve total enough control over the waters of the Black Sea that Ukraine could be prevented from landing hits, and every time a hit does land, Ukraine's defense secures a massive victory. But just as important as what Ukraine is doing with their drones on the battlefield, is what Ukraine is doing behind the scenes—and it's here, that we've got to talk about production. Rest assured, it's exceptionally important that we do. From the very beginning, Ukraine's maritime drones have stood out for more than just their tactical value and their pioneering feats. They're also exceptional because of just how easy they are to build, not just on the cheap, but with equipment and tools that any person can access, without proper warehouses or assembly lines devoted to the work.

Early Strikes and Strategic Surprises: Ukraine's First Sea Drone Attacks

And even that's not all that Ukraine's sea-drone industry can bring to bear in 2024. Ukrainian USVs have been spotted carrying the FrankenSAM, an improvised air-defense system that allows the drone boats to carry two anti-air ARCHER missiles in order to ward off Russian helicopter pilots up to nine miles or fifteen kilometers away. A drone boat that washed up in Romania was observed to have been constructed from an American-made, rigid-hulled inflatable boat, carrying a missile taken from a STYX anti-ship missile. And the Riverine, a 1.5-meter long, low-lying craft, is a resupply and logistical sea drone that's capable of sneaking through hard-to-penetrate waters either at sea or inland, ferrying up to a 30-kilogram payload to land operations units or small manned vessels at sea for minimal cost and minimal effort. Finally, there's the Marichka, a large, unmanned underwater vehicle that's thought to be the first UUV ever created specifically based on the needs of a wartime environment. Six meters long and one meter in diameter, the Marichka looks almost like a big torpedo, made out of metal with a hull that appears to be able to withstand crushing pressures in the depths of the Black Sea. Built at a reported cost of under 500,000 US dollars, the Marichka is advertised by the group producing it, AMMO Ukraine, as an anti-ship, anti-submarine, intelligence-gathering, transport, and, notably, anti-bridge weapon, able to operate at a range of a thousand kilometers. Per AMMO Ukraine, it can be concealed from hydro-acoustic scanners underwater, it's resilient against electronic warfare countermeasures, and it's able to go dormant while waiting for activation either by signal or by timer. Optimized to impact ships under the waterline, the Marichka's payload capacity is unknown, but judging by its size, it's likely to be able to rip massive holes into most of the ships of Russia's Black Sea fleet, and potentially even sink them in one hit. By now, it should be abundantly clear that Ukraine's fleet of sea drones is unlike anything the world has ever seen. While we certainly can't account for the hardware that global militaries are developing under classified or secret programs, Ukraine is, at present, the only nation in the world to have combat-tested the coordinated use of modern sea drones at large scale. With any new technology in warfare, however, just producing the technology only means so much. It's got to be tested out, and where Ukraine's maritime drones are concerned, the results have been stunning. We've already told the story of how Ukraine introduced its sea drones to the world, with its first attack in Sevastopol in late October of 2022, but since that time, the nation and its robot watercraft have proven that their success was anything but a fluke. A particularly notable victory came on August the fourth, 2023, when a 4,100-ton landing ship called the Olenegorsky Gornyak came under attack from what appeared to be a single Ukrainian sea drone. Loaded with 450 kilograms of high explosives, the sea drone was able to make it not just to Russia-controlled Crimea, but well past that, to the Russian city of Novorossiysk, nearly 600 kilometers or 370 miles from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. Piloted by a Ukrainian operator sitting in the safety of their own nation, the sea drone was able to close rapidly on the landing ship, severely damaging it in a way that Ukraine claimed took it out of action indefinitely. The drone employed in the attack is thought to have been the Mamai, the plastic-hulled, radar-low-observable, 60-knot-capable, bulletproof sea drone that had only been revealed to the public a week prior. At the time, the sheer amount of explosives that the Mamai carried stunned global analysts, who contrasted it against the small-payload aerial drones that were showing up in force on both sides of the war. And just before the Mamai made its grand introduction to the world, Ukraine's intelligence service used the Sea Baby—at that time, another newly revealed maritime drone—to conduct one of a series of attacks on the Kerch Strait Bridge. A hated symbol within Ukraine, the Kerch bridge connects occupied Crimea directly to Russian territory by road and rail, and it's been a top target for Ukraine both for strategic and symbolic reasons.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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