BULLETIN #4
Bulletin #4, February 24, 2026: Autonomy at Sea. A map of the Black Sea marking Odesa, Snake Island, Sevastopol, the Kerch Bridge, Novorossiysk and the Bosporus.
SUMMARY
Four years into the full-scale war, Ukraine, a country left with almost no navy after 2014, has pushed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet out of the western Black Sea. Uncrewed surface vessels did much of that work, alongside cruise missiles and intelligence. This bulletin sets out what those systems did, where they fell short, and what the larger autonomous programs elsewhere are trying to do.
THE SETTING
The Black Sea is a closed sea. On February 28, 2022, Turkey applied the 1936 Montreux Convention and closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles to the warships of the parties at war. Russia could not reinforce the fleet from outside, so every ship lost in the Black Sea stayed lost.
On April 14, 2022, the fleet’s flagship, the cruiser Moskva, sank. Ukraine said it had hit the ship with two Neptune anti-ship missiles. Russia attributed the loss to a fire. Missiles, not drones, did that one.
SMALL AUTONOMY
Ukraine’s sea drones are small, fast boats a few metres long that carry several hundred kilograms of explosive. The two best-known families are the Defence Intelligence (HUR) Magura and the Security Service (SBU) Sea Baby. Each costs a small fraction of the ships they are sent against.
In this war, “autonomous” has mostly meant uncrewed. Onboard autonomy handles the long transit. Operators, often hundreds of kilometres away, watch through cameras over satellite links, choose targets, and steer the final run. The person is still in the loop.
29 OCT 2022 Sevastopol First massed sea-drone attack on the
fleet's home port. Russia
acknowledged damage to a minesweeper.
17 JUL 2023 Kerch Strait Sea drones damage the Crimean Bridge.
Two civilians are killed. The same
day, Russia leaves the Black Sea
Grain Initiative.
04 AUG 2023 Novorossiysk Landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak
damaged in Russia's main remaining
Black Sea base.
01 FEB 2024 Donuzlav Corvette Ivanovets sunk. HUR said six
Magura V5 drones hit the hull.
14 FEB 2024 Alupka Landing ship Tsezar Kunikov sunk.
05 MAR 2024 Kerch Strait Patrol ship Sergei Kotov sunk.
31 DEC 2024 Tarkhankut HUR said missile-armed Magura V5s
shot down Mi-8 helicopters. Not
confirmed by Russia.
02 MAY 2025 Novorossiysk HUR said Magura V7s firing AIM-9
Sidewinders shot down Su-30 fighters,
a first for a naval drone. One loss
is independently supported; the
second is not.
28 NOV 2025 Off Turkey Sea Baby drones strike two
sanctioned, empty tankers bound for
Novorossiysk.WHAT IT ACHIEVED
The fleet moved much of its activity east, from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, and largely stopped operating in the western Black Sea. After Russia left the grain deal, Ukraine opened its own shipping corridor along the western coast in August 2023, and merchant ships have used it since.
None of this was the drones alone. Storm Shadow cruise missiles struck the fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol in September 2023, and missiles and aerial drones struck ships in port and in dry dock. The sea drones made the fleet’s own waters unsafe. The other weapons made its harbours unsafe.
LIMITS
- Countermeasures. Russia put booms, nets and sunken barges across harbour entrances, armed helicopters and patrol boats to hunt drones, added machine guns to ships, and jammed. Each adaptation raised the price of the next attack.
- Targets leave. Once the fleet withdrew east and stayed in port, there was less to hit.
- Payload. A few hundred kilograms rarely sinks a warship. The Ivanovets took several hits. Attacks came in groups.
- Sea state. Small craft need reasonable weather, and most attacks came at night in calm water.
- Links. Operators depend on satellite communications. Jamming or a lost link leaves a drone drifting.
- Denial, not control. Sea drones can make water dangerous. They cannot escort a convoy, board a ship, or hold a coastline. The fleet’s submarines kept launching Kalibr cruise missiles throughout.
LARGE AUTONOMY
The other end of the scale is ocean-going, with no operator on the joystick.
- The U.S. Navy’s Sea Hunter, a 132-foot trimaran from DARPA’s ACTUV program, sailed from San Diego to Pearl Harbor and back in early 2019 with no crew aboard, apart from brief inspection boardings from an escort.
- Boeing delivered the first Orca extra-large uncrewed undersea vehicle to the U.S. Navy in December 2023.
- In August 2023 the Pentagon announced Replicator, aiming to field “multiple thousands” of inexpensive autonomous systems within 18 to 24 months.
- In 2024 the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel Paparo, described a plan to turn the Taiwan Strait into an “unmanned hellscape” in the event of an invasion.
The limits here are different: who fixes the ship when nothing aboard can, how to communicate across an ocean, how to follow rules of the road written for human lookouts, and the cost of a large hull that may be lost. U.S. policy (DoD Directive 3000.09, updated in 2023) requires “appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”
ASSESSMENT
The Black Sea did not show that autonomy has replaced navies. It showed that many small, cheap craft, mostly steered by people far away, can deny a sea to a larger fleet that cannot be reinforced and has few places to hide. The Taiwan Strait and the western Pacific are wider, rougher and farther from shore. What worked in a closed sea will have to travel.
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