The boats were hand-built. A Canadian-made SeaDoo jet ski engine, a fiberglass hull, commercial satellite communications gear, a camera turret for the remote pilot and a contact fuse: that was the recipe for the uncrewed surface vessels Ukraine sent into Sevastopol on October 29, 2022.
The Navy Lookout analysis of the raid, published November 7, 2022, said Russia’s own defense statements counted “nine unmanned aerial vehicles and seven autonomous maritime drones.” One target was the frigate Admiral Makarov, flagship of the Black Sea Fleet after the loss of the Moskva. The mechanics here favor the attacker. A small fiberglass hull riding low in the water is hard to detect, the analysis noted, both on a long run from the launch point and even for defenders when it is close to the target.
An old tactic, rebuilt cheap
The author did not call it a revolution. He called it “a modern development of a tactic that dates back centuries,” and pointed to Italian human torpedoes in the Second World War and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. The catch for other navies is the harbor. Navy Lookout observed that “neither Devonport or Portsmouth have any physical barrier around warships,” while nuclear submarines at Faslane sit behind pneumatic fender systems made by Trelleborg. The remedy, it argued, is “round-the-clock vigilance”: better sensors, patrol vessels, more crew and stronger weapons.
The Caesar Kunikov
By February 14, 2024, Ukraine was using the Magura V5. Its General Staff said the Russian landing ship Caesar Kunikov was sunk that morning off Alupka in Crimea. Ukraine’s military intelligence said the drones “critically breached it on its port side and causing it to sink,” and released video of several drones closing on the ship. “It was a joint operation between Ukraine’s military intelligence and the armed forces,” the General Staff said.
The Kunikov, a Project 775 ship with a standard complement of 87, was by the U.K. Defense Ministry’s count the fourth Russian Black Sea Fleet landing ship sunk since February 2022. Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said only five Ropucha-class landing ships remained in the fleet, down from 13 at the start of the war. He could not resist a joke about the date: “Not every Caesar is fortunate enough to die twice, let alone in one day.”
Moscow stayed quiet. The Russian Defense Ministry did not confirm the sinking and said only that it had destroyed six aircraft-type drones over the Black Sea. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov sent questions to the ministry, calling it “a military matter.” A local witness told Crimean Wind that wounded and dead sailors were taken to Sevastopol under police escort.
Ukraine’s General Staff put the toll on the fleet at about 33 percent of Russian Black Sea Fleet combat ships damaged or destroyed since the invasion began, including 24 naval vessels and one submarine.
Sources
- Attack on Russian Fleet in Sevastopol (Navy Lookout)
- Ukrainian military says it sank Russian landing ship Caesar Kunikov in Black Sea (Meduza)
- Military says Russian landing ship sunk in Black Sea (Kyiv Independent)
- Ukrainian forces destroyed ship Caesar Kunikov (war.ukraine.ua)
