Ukraine has claimed that it’s successfully used uncrewed surface vessels (USV), better known as drone boats, to launch aerial drones against Russian targets for the first time. According to Ukrainian authorities, the first-person view (FPV) drones were employed in combat during strikes on Russian ground-based air defense systems. This is the latest development in Ukraine’s Black Sea drone war, which is seeing increasingly innovative use of uncrewed systems, including adapted air-to-air missiles launched from USVs against Russian aircraft.
The latest strikes were said to have been carried out by the Ukrainian Navy, which published a video of one of the attacks — which occurred yesterday — against a Pantsir-S1 short-range air defense system (SHORADS). The extent of the damage to the vehicle is not immediately clear, based on this footage. While not independently verified, Russian military bloggers have also stated that Ukraine is now using USVs to launch FPV drones in attacks on targets close to the Black Sea coast.
Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security (CSCIS), a government-run media organization, today released more details of the strikes, which it describes as the first of this kind.
“Only a week after Ukrainian sea drones made history by successfully taking down Russian helicopters, another historical first as our homegrown naval drones are now launching their own FPV drones, destroying Russia’s air defense units,” CSCIS said on social media.
The type of FPV drones used in the strike, as well as the type of USV from which they were launched, have not been disclosed, although an infographic released by CSCIS shows a drone boat that looks broadly similar to the widely used Magura V5, as well as three quadcopter FPV drones.
After being brought closer to their targets using the USV, the FPV drones were launched against two Russian Pantsir-S1 systems and one Osa system. All three SHORADS vehicles were located in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region.
The Pantsir-S1 (known in the West as the SA-22 Greyhound) — which you can read more about here — is one of Russia’s latest SHORADS, while the Osa (SA-8 Gecko) is a Cold War-era system, also used by Ukraine. Both are based on a wheeled high-mobility chassis.
According to The Kyiv Independent, a single Pantsir-S1 system has a price tag of around $15 million.
Back in December, the first evidence emerged that Ukraine was using a capability like this, with aerial drones being launched from USVs as part of its campaign of attacks on Russian offshore platforms. Yesterday’s strikes appear to be the first time that targets on land have been engaged in this way.
It’s also noteworthy that Ukraine last week used Magura V5 drone boats armed with repurposed R-73 heat-seeking air-to-air missiles to bring down two Russian Mi-8 helicopters and damage another, off the coast of Crimea, an apparently historic engagement that you can read more about here.
These developments underscore the importance of drones — especially the numerous FPV types — to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, providing a relatively low-cost and accurate way to compensate for the huge gap in standoff strike weapons and artillery, not to mention manpower when compared to the Russian opposition.
In a naval context, the ability of Ukrainian USVs to strike targets on land is a significant one. Previously, drone boats had very limited options for striking targets on land. As well as the kamikaze-type of USVs that have taken a steady toll on Russian shipping, Ukraine has fielded drone boats armed with unguided artillery rockets. However, these have been primarily used to attack targets at sea. Other USVs have been fitted with heavy machine guns. These offer strictly limited range but are also able to engage close-in aerial targets, providing a degree of self-defense.
Meanwhile, FPV drones have a maximum range of about a dozen miles, although, in practice, it’s usually much less than that.
A limitation of FPV drones is their requirement for continuous line-of-sight communications with their controllers. However, their range can be maximized by avoiding terrain that can interfere with their signal. This is especially relevant in the littoral areas around the Black Sea, with very few line-of-sight obstacles between the drone boat and potential shore targets, maximizing FPV drone range.
In some areas, there may also exist the option to use elevated antennas and relays installed on balloons or placed on uncrewed or even crewed aircraft. This would extend the FPV drones’ connectivity much further and provide a more consistent link. You can read all about this in our previous piece here. Another option might be to use a fiber-optic communications link, with the drone spooling out a cable to remain physically connected to its boat mothership, something that has been used in land-based applications in Ukraine. This would completely remove any line-of-sight communications issues between the FPV drone and the boat. The quality of the video in the Pantsir strike points to this possibility.
One question surrounds the method of operator control used for the FPV drones. As noted above, most likely, the FPV video and control feed are being routed to the drone boat via line-of-sight datalink or fiber optic cable and then back to a controller via a satellite datalink, although that would introduce a possible issue with latency. Developments with AI infused into lower-end drones could help drastically to solve any connectivity issues. Although this is still very much an emerging technology, it’s one that is likely to soon erupt on the Ukrainian battlefield, should the war grind on. You can read all about this in our special feature here.
As well as being used to attack targets that have already been located by other surveillance means, FPV drones are also able to extend the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the drone boats, supplementing the electro-optical and infrared cameras that are already carried.
The appearance of the FPV-drone-equipped USVs makes sense. So far, Ukrainian USVs have proven to be a serious menace to Russian naval operations in and around the Black Sea. Already, drone boats presented a very real threat to vessels in port, as well as bridges and other coastal infrastructure. Now that threat has been extended further inland, putting Russian troops and equipment that were, until now, relatively safe, potentially in the crosshairs of Ukrainian drones attacking them from their USV springboards in the Black Sea.
The threat that Ukrainian USVs pose in the Black Sea has already led to Russia employing varied means of trying to counter them. As well as armed patrols by naval vessels and aircraft, Russia has also experimented with air-launched FPV drones, which are delivered by helicopter before hunting down drone boats, as you can read about here.
Having FPVs prosecute kamikaze attacks from uncrewed platforms at sea also makes good economic sense for Ukraine. After all, some of the more capable drone boats are understood to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, all of which would be lost in an instant if they ended their missions in a one-way attack, successful or otherwise. With weaponized FPV drones on board, each drone boat can potentially launch multiple attacks at a much lower cost and even return home afterward, provided it evades destruction itself. Indeed, the FPV drones could potentially also be recovered, if they are not expended.
It should also be recalled that operating aerial drones from boats is not without precedent, at least when it comes to flying them off crewed warships. In this area, Israel has established a lead, although it’s developed bigger and more sophisticated one-way attack drones that can be launched from containers on the decks of small warships, both for domestic use and for export, and which can be operated with man-in-the-loop guidance.
Above all, Ukraine’s claim of the successful use of FPV attack drones launched from USVs provides another example of the rapid development of uncrewed systems and tactics across all domains in the war in Ukraine. Considering the unquestioned success of FPV drones launched from the ground, it’s no surprise that Ukraine is now increasingly exploring their employment from uncrewed surface vessels. In the process, it’s bringing together two novel assets that Ukrainian forces have successfully used against the Russian Armed Forces on multiple occasions in the past.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com