The commander of Ukraine’s naval forces said Russia has learned how to counter the sea drones that crippled the Black Sea Fleet, and that Kyiv has to innovate quickly to maintain its maritime edge.
“What you did yesterday will no longer work tomorrow,” said Vice Adm. Oleksiy Neizhpapa in a Radio Liberty interview published on Saturday.
“There was a time when we could calmly enter the Sevastopol Bay with drones,” Neizhpapa said. “Now, it’s not so simple.”
Neizhpapa said the Black Sea Fleet’s solution was a “layered defense system” combining detection and anti-drone capabilities.
“It begins with a tiered detection system. Long-range, medium, and short-range zones for detecting our unmanned systems,” said the vice admiral. “Then comes their procedure for destroying them.”
He said Ukraine has responded by fitting air defense systems on its drones to counter the kinetic threat. Many of Ukraine’s uncrewed surface vessels were initially designed to rush their targets and explode.
The technology overturned Moscow’s advantage in the Black Sea — Kyiv has no formal navy, while Russia deployed dozens of armed vessels in the maritime region. Yet with a combination of sea drones and long-range missile strikes, Ukraine sank an estimated quarter of Russia’s naval assets in the area, including the flagship Moskva, pushing most of the fleet out of Crimea.
Still, the sea drones were later shown to possibly be vulnerable to aerial threats such as helicopters with machine guns.
So Ukraine started fitting some of its drones, such as the Magura V5 exploding sea drone, with the Soviet R-73 “SeeDragon” anti-air missile. In December, it said one of its drones shot down a Russian Mi-8 helicopter for the first time in the Black Sea.
“So now we are beginning to push the enemy back from the air above the sea, not allowing them to destroy our sea drones from the air,” Neizhpapa said.
“And so on and so on,” he continued. “It is a constant competition. Whoever is ahead will have success.”
The vice admiral said that Ukraine’s naval drones now carry “various types of weapons on board” to expand their defensive capabilities.
But he’s keenly aware that the war has pushed Russia to also value flexibility and quick decision-making. Moscow is trying to make its own sea drones, he said.
“There have been a few more or less successful uses, and they are working on it,” Neizhpapa said.
The White House said in late March that Ukraine and Russia had agreed during talks in Saudi Arabia to a cease-fire in the Black Sea. The Trump administration said it’s a move that would restore access to vital shipping routes for the global grain industry.
But Russia has since said that while it supports the truce in principle, the Kremlin has a “whole range of questions” that must be answered before the cease-fire comes into effect.
Ukraine and Russia also agreed last month to stop attacks on energy infrastructure, but have since traded accusations that the other has breached the agreement.
