Ukraine’s maritime drones are grouped into squads capable of replicating the capabilities of a single warship, a Ukrainian commander said.
He said the squads, each made up of about 10 to 20 drones, will work together to combine several distinct functions.
“We have a fleet, but it is divided into smaller elements,” Lukashevich told the media outlet.
Lukashevich, who was appointed head of a special unit of Ukraine’s security services, said that previously naval drones were mainly used for surveillance or logistics purposes.
“We’re doing a lot of things that no one in the world has done” with this technology, he said.
Ukraine was left without a conventional navy in 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
The move deprived Ukraine of most of its shipping and all control over the port of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s much-feared Black Sea Fleet.
In response, and under Lukashevich’s leadership, Ukraine developed several types of naval drones.
These include the Sea Baby, which damaged the crucial Kerch Bridge last fall, and the Magura V5, six of which tracked the corvette Ivanovets in February.
Ukraine has also mounted a Grad multiple-launch rocket system on the back of a locally developed Sea Baby drone to hit land targets, as the Financial Times’ Christopher Miller reported in May, citing an unnamed official.
The idea of a drone squad replicating the tasks of a full warship is just the latest iteration of the rapid development of maritime drone capabilities in Ukraine.
Under Lukashevich’s leadership, Ukraine carried out a series of attacks using naval drones and, with long-range anti-ship missiles, destroyed or damaged much of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
In February, the United Kingdom declared that 25% of Russian ships in the Black Sea had been sunk, damaged or destroyed. Ukraine places this figure even higher.
Due to the regular strikes, the Russian fleet has been forced to limit its operations outside of Sevastopol and move many of its warships to more distant ports, such as Novorossiysk last fall.
Novorossiysk has significantly worse facilities than Sevastapol, and although the ships are still within cruise missile range of Ukraine, the lag gives Ukraine’s air defenses crucial time to respond, as the Journal reports.
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