The USV is approaching a Russian Navy ship.
The warships of Russia's Black Sea Fleet weresailed on October 29th by a group of 16 Kamikaze Robots. Russian warships shot down nine Ukrainian drones and there were extensive air defenses on land.
Russia initially claimed it had defeated the attack without damage, but then denied the successful strike on Moskva until after it sank. The smoke from the harbor is not something to be concerned with.
Black and white video feed footage of boats smashing into Russian ships was released by the Ukrainians.
The Ivan's hull had its radar knocked out, according to internal Russian reports.
The Black Sea Fleet still has many other ships that can mount Kalibr missiles, even though the Makarov may have been targeted for launching land- attack cruise missiles. My colleague David Axe will be writing an article about the current condition and history of the admiral.
The Ivan Golubets is a minesweeper with a crew of68. It has multiple mine-sweeping trawls, as well as anti-submarine rockets, portable Strela anti-air missiles, and two each 30-millimeter gatling cannons, 25-millimeter autocannons, and 12.7- millimeter heavy machine guns.
It should have been able to detect and destroy the small USVs that came in. An anonymous Ukrainian official told the New York Times that the vessel had suffered severe damage, which may have crippled it.
Additional USVs are racing towards Russian warships in a video posted by a Ukranian journalist. The recording uses a color camera, which could mean thatUkraine used more than one type of USV.
The color-camera USVs have been seen, with ships and boats spraying machinegun and cannon fire at them. It seems likely that Russian defensive fire destroyed these USVs. The USV narrowly avoided colliding with a Russian boat.
At least three Russian warships capable of carrying Kalibr missiles may have been hit by the attack.
The simultaneous air-and-sea attack is intended to distract the defense around the warships. The conditions that allowed at least two USVs to evade notice and strike Russian ships were created by the air attack and most of the USVs.
Given the proximity of nearby repair facilities, a repeat of the Moskva's dramatic sinking seems unlikely. Following the sinking of the Moskva by Ukrainian land-based missiles, Russia's surface naval operations were severely restricted.
Russia has retaliated by suspending its participation in a Turkey-brokered initiative withUkraine guaranteeing safe passage through the Black Sea for Ukrainian grain ships. November 19 would have been the last day of the deal. The attack on Moscow's warships violated an arrangement for safe passage of civilian grain shipping, according to Moscow. Due to complaints over sanctions, the Kremlin was threatening to pull out.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY - OCTOBER 14: Ships, including those carrying grain from Ukranian, are waiting to be inspected. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, which paved the way for Ukraine to safely ship grain from three key ports, requires vessels to be inspected by a team of officials from Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and the United Nations. The number of inspection teams has been increased by the Joint Coordination Center. The photo was taken by Chris McGrath.
It is difficult to re-impose a Russian blockade on Ukrainian grain shipping if you do not deploy ships far beyond the city. Russia could use submarines, naval attack aircraft, or land-based anti-ship missiles to try and stop the grain shipments from leaving.
British specialists were blamed by Russia for the attack on the Nordstream I underwater line. The UK is known to have transferred drone submarine minehunters from uncrewed drone boats to be used for demining near the mouth of the Danube.
Russian sources claim that a large U.S. RQ-4B Global Hawks was taken off from Italy and was likely used to conduct pre-strike intel on the Ukrainians.
In order to preserve dignity, Moscow often claims that its military setbacks in the invasion of Ukraine are the result of covert NATO forces in the country. NATO assets operating outside of Ukraine have provided intelligence which has helped plan Ukrainian strikes.
According to Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov, the attack was carried out by the SBU intelligence agency and the military. A taunting message on Russian military websites was posted by Ukrainian hackers.
The main base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet was the location of a strange robotic boat that ran aground. After photographing the mysterious boat, the Russian Navy towed it back into the water and blew it up.
The crash of the USV should have warned the Russian Navy of the possibility of attacks from the Ukrainian Navy. The Black Sea Fleet has many small boats and a unit of trained killer dolphins that are specially designed to guard against sabotage attacks from NATO naval special operations forces. It's clear that foreknowledge didn't result in enough responses.
It was not clear if Ukraine had many more of the robot USVs than the one that was lost in September. It's more difficult to maintain long-distance radio control links with drones than it is with aerial drones, and the crash of the USV might suggest the Ukrainian design was technically immature.
The coordinated attack on October 29 suggests that Ukraine produced at least eight of the USVs, leaving a question mark on how many more it may have in reserve.
Uncertainty as to whether Ukraine can repeat such a strike will complicate Russian naval planning going forward, even as maintaining maritime supply lines to Crimea increases in importance due to the crippled railroad bridge.
Uncrewed surface vessels have never been this successful before. During World War II, harbor attacks were carried out by frogmen. Sometimes these high-risk/high-reward ops resulted in massive damage to target ships, but also often ended with the capture or death of the commandoes. At the end of World War II, Japan used torpedoes and boats.
Uncrewed USVs are a viable method of launching such attacks without exposing crew to death or capture. Ukraine's USVs seem similar to a torpedo in some ways, but they are more flexible and can be used more often.
The invasion of Ukraine has led to the development and testing of new robotic weapons.
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