Military experts say that the apparent use of remote-controlled boats to attack Russian ships over the weekend is likely to demonstrate a new capability for Ukrainian forces.
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The Black Sea seen from Cape Fiolent, outside the Crimean port city of Sevastopol in 2018.
The small boat speeds toward a much larger ship in the distance, cutting through choppy waves and dodging gunfire, presumably from a helicopter shown hovering above. A now-viral video of its journey ends inconclusively, without showing its fate or what happened to what is suspected to be its intended target: Russia’s strategically important Black Sea Fleet.
The original source of the video and the origin of the vessel it was taken from remain unconfirmed. But military experts say they believe it to be footage from a remote-controlled attack on the Russian naval fleet off the Crimean port city of Sevastopol over the weekend — an attack that Russia said was carried by seven such boats accompanied by air drones, and has accused Ukraine of carrying out with British assistance.
Russia said that it had recovered the wreckage of sea drones used to target its fleet in Saturday’s assault and that the attack was the reason it was suspending a critical deal that had allowed for the export of grain from Ukrainian ports to help alleviate a global food crisis.
British officials have denied involvement, while Ukrainian, American and other Western officials have mostly refused to comment about the video or the attack. But the attack comes a few months after the United States, among other NATO allies, said it was supplying Ukraine with remote-controlled boats, even while, unusually, refusing to give details about that military aid.
In Washington, a Pentagon official who briefed journalists on Monday on condition he not be named said the United States had concluded that there were explosions near Russian naval vessels off the coast of Sevastopol, but declined further comment.
P.W. Singer, a specialist on 21st century warfare at the New America think-tank in Washington, said it was clear from videos on social media and other public reporting that the attacks on the Russian fleet “definitely” involved multiple remote-controlled boats and aerial drones in a complex assault that “points to higher skill levels, higher competence” by Ukrainian forces.
The State of the War
- Grain Deal: After accusing Ukraine of attacking its ships in Crimea, Russia withdrew from an agreement allowing the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. The move jeopardized a rare case of wartime coordination aimed at lowering global food prices and combating hunger.
- Turning the Tables: With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has an artillery advantage over Russia in the southern Kherson region, erasing what had been a critical asset for Moscow.
- Fears of Escalation: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated the unfounded claim that Ukraine was preparing to explode a so-called dirty bomb, as concerns rose in the West that the Kremlin was seeking a pretext to escalate the war.
- A Coalition Under Strain: President Biden is facing new challenges keeping together the bipartisan, multinational coalition supporting Ukraine. The alliance has shown signs of fraying with the approach of the U.S. midterm elections and a cold European winter.
Ukrainian officials have not commented publicly on Saturday’s attack, in line with a policy of official ambiguity about such strikes. But if the attack is confirmed, it would be a new example of Ukrainian forces hitting sensitive Russian sites from afar and expanding its battlefield capabilities after months of accelerated military aid from Western nations.
Drone boats are not a new weapon. Some were designed more than 100 years ago, including by the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla, and used by the Germans as far back as World War I.
Yet in a conflict that may reshape modern warfare, their apparent use in Ukraine recently has galvanized military planners and intrigued experts.
The United States and its allies, which have provided extraordinary details about the flood of other weapons they have sent to Ukraine, also have refused to discuss the uncrewed vessels.
“I can promise you the damn thing works,” John Kirby, a Biden administration spokesman, told reporters on April 13, after the United States first announced it would be sending an unspecified number of drone boats to Ukraine.
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that the attack on Saturday morning — which it said was carried out by nine flying drones and seven on the sea — and had caused “minor damage” to one of its minesweepers, the Ivan Golubets.
Updates: Russia-Ukraine War
Updated Oct. 31, 2022, 4:15 p.m. ET
- Sea drone attack on Russian fleet puts focus on expanded Ukrainian arms.
- Oleg Tinkov, former banking tycoon, renounces Russian citizenship.
- Grain ships set sail despite Russia’s decision to suspend participation in the deal.
Other footage circulated on social media from the same day appeared to show infrared video of an attack on a different warship as well. GeoConfirmed, one of several volunteer groups that closely track battlefield movements in Ukraine, said the ship shown being attacked in that footage matched details of the Russian Navy frigate Admiral Makarov. That warship is believed to have become Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea after its warship Moskva was struck in April by Ukrainian missiles and sunk — a humiliating blow that officials said was made possible, in part, by American intelligence.
ImageA satellite image released by Maxar Technologies showed the warship Moskva docked at a port in Sevastopol in April.Credit…Maxar Technologies, via Associated Press
Mr. Singer, the warfare expert, said that the attack on Russia’s navy on Saturday, together with Ukraine’s sinking of the Moskva in April, was a striking accomplishment given Russia’s vast naval superiority over Ukraine, which lost most of its own navy when Moscow annexed Crimea in 2015.
“The Ukrainians, the way they took out the Moskva, these multiple attacks on the harbors — it’s not going after them the old conventional way,” Mr. Singer said in an interview on Sunday. “It’s exploiting weaknesses. And across this war itself, no one knows Russian weaknesses better than the Ukrainians,” he said. “They trained on the same systems originally, and it’s their turf.”
Weapons experts who have analyzed images of the small seacraft — described as about the size of a kayak or a torpedo — said it appeared to be the same kind of boat that washed up six weeks ago on a Sevastopol beach after an explosion off the city’s coast. At that time, analysts at NavalNews, a specialized trade journal, said the vessel appeared to be built for speed and was small enough to assure only limited radar detection.
It may also have been built as a kind of kamikaze boat, designed to crash into Russian warships — similar to the aerial drones that Ukraine and Russia each have used, with devastating effect, against ground targets. The NavalNews analysts said the shape of the small uncrewed boat suggests it could carry a warhead — potentially either an air-launched bomb or artillery shell.
Where the drone boats came from remained unconfirmed.
On Monday, the Russian state-owned station NTV repeated Moscow’s unsubstantiated claims that the attack was launched with the help of British forces, and broadcast a video clip of observers purportedly speaking in a British accent to bolster its claim. The Russian Ministry of Defense said British naval forces had been training Ukrainian troops in the Black Sea port city of Ochakiv since this summer.
In a tweet on Saturday, the British Ministry of Defense denied Moscow’s accusations as “false claims of an epic scale.”
“This invented story, says more about arguments going on inside the Russian Government than it does about the west,” the British ministry said in the post.
ImageRussian Black Sea fleet ships in one of the bays of Sevastopol in 2014.Credit…Associated Press
The British government has been helping to train and otherwise bolster Ukraine’s depleted navy since 2014, and last year it sent a destroyer, the HMS Defender, to the Black Sea near Crimea to show support for Ukraine and try to establish the idea that those waterways should be free for Ukrainian use. It was met by warning shots fired by Russian forces.
Germany said it had recently sent two surface drone boats to Ukraine and plans to send eight more. And though U.S. officials said on Sunday that the United States had not assisted with Saturday’s attack, they have been consistently vague about the remote-controlled coastal defense ships that Washington first said it would deliver in April.
“Coastal defense is something that Ukraine has repeatedly said they’re interested in,” Mr. Kirby said on April 14. He called it a “particularly an acute need now” in the Sea of Azov and the northern Black Sea.
In September, a senior NATO official described the remote-controlled boats as “torpedo-sized” but also would not discuss their capabilities or who had supplied them to Ukraine. NATO officials also did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.
It’s not clear why the remote-controlled boats would demand such a high level of secrecy, particularly given the enthusiasm that the United States and its allies have shown in discussing other weapons they have sent to Ukraine.
Some experts have described the most recent class of drone boats as still in experimental phases, including what Mr. Singer said was some recent test operations around the Arabian Peninsula.
Whatever their origins, Mr. Singer said the use of drones added a particular element of terror in the battlefield. “There is something about drones — something about the unmanned aspect of it that drives more controversy, drives more fear.”
John Ismay contributed reporting from Washington.
Source: nytimes.com
