Ukraine's drone innovation turns the tide against Russia's Navy

Ukrainian maritime drones have become the nightmare of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The Russians began hunting them with helicopters, but the Ukrainians found an interesting way to turn drones from prey into hunters. Here's what they came up with.

Ukrainians used maritime drones to attack the Black Sea Fleet with varying degrees of success. Their victims included, among others, the landing ship Project 775 "Oleniegorski Miner", the tanker SIG, and the patrol ship "Vasiliy Bykov". Moreover, Ukrainians used them to attack the Crimean Bridge.

In the meantime, to bolster the defence of their ships, the Russians began using helicopters, which destroyed the detected Black Sea drone Magura V5 using, for example, deck guns. This forced the Ukrainians to start equipping some naval drones with R-73 Vympel air-to-air missiles.

According to the Russians, these were ineffective, as seen in the video below (a failed launch). Still, on the other hand, in April, under unexplained circumstances over the Black Sea, the Russians lost a Mi-24 helicopter.

The Magura V5 maritime drones resemble a motorboat in appearance, being about 5.5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide, and are powered by a jet propulsion allowing them to reach speeds of up to 78 kilometres per hour.

AR goggles are used for their control, similar to those used for FPV drones, providing the pilot with a first-person view. The pilot directly sees through an optoelectronic head equipped with a daytime and thermal imaging camera, and the image transmission is ensured by encrypted communication provided by the Starlink terminal.

The Magura V5 drones are characterized by a range of over 800 kilometres. Their conventional payload included a warhead weighing about 300 kilograms, but there have also been reports of payloads being twice as heavy.

This displacement is more than sufficient for carrying a launcher for a pair of R-73 Vympel missiles weighing 105 kilograms each and additional equipment. The R-73 Vympel missiles, produced since 1985, are the Soviet response to the AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles.

These are "fire and forget" type missiles that home in on a heat source, so it's quite possible that the maritime drone could target parts of aircraft such as MiG-29 or Su-27. However, it's important to note that all that needs to be done is to capture the helicopter's thermal signature with the missile's guidance head, and after launch, the missile will find its target on its own.

The destruction of the target is ensured by a 7.5-kilogram fragmentation warhead. It is not known what the range is, because it definitely will not be declared up to 30 kilometres at high altitude but will most likely be just slightly over 10 kilometres, because the air just above the ground or water is denser.