The rise of Sea Baby surface drones in the battle for the Black Sea
The Russo-Ukrainian war has become a turning point in the history of modern warfare, revealing how technology, speed, and unconventional solutions can redefine military power. Journalist Roman Romaniuk offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at Ukraine’s defence sector during the most critical moments of the war. This excerpt focuses on one of the most striking episodes of the conflict — the early use of naval drones against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Through detailed reporting and firsthand testimonies, Romaniuk captures the uncertainty, technical risks, and strategic decisions that shaped Ukraine’s first steps into a new era of war technology.
The English edition of the book was initiated and made possible by the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry
As the world seeks to understand what weapons the Ukrainian army uses, this book provides answers grounded in real operations and lived experience. The excerpt demonstrates how Ukrainian weapons evolved under pressure, combining innovation, improvisation, and strategic daring to challenge a much larger enemy.
By tracing the development of sea drones and other experimental systems, Roman Romaniuk shows how modern war weapons emerge not only from long-term planning but from urgent battlefield necessity. These stories highlight the role of war technology in reshaping naval warfare and explain why the Russo-Ukrainian war is increasingly seen as a blueprint for future conflicts around the globe.
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On the night of September 16–17, 2022, a silent new weapon entered the history of warfare. A group of naval drones — the first of their kind ever used in combat — slipped through the dark waters toward Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea.
From a secure bunker, Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, and Vice Admiral Oleksii Neizhpapa, commander of the Ukrainian Navy, followed their progress in tense silence. Beside them stood Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and a brigadier general of the SSU’s counterintelligence unit, known by the call sign Hunter — the architect of Ukraine’s sea-drone programme.
The team’s mission: to send the drones into the heart of the Russian Black Sea fleet — the Bay of Sevastopol — in the hope of striking Russian missile-carrying ships.
“Those were the very first models of these munitions,” Hunter told the author. “Some sank to the bottom of the sea. Others detonated spontaneously. Back then, the design was still fragile, unstable.”
Yet five drones, each carrying 108 kilograms of TNT, had survived the treacherous journey and now raced toward Sevastopol.
“We were seventy kilometers from the Admiral Makarov frigate,” recalled a member of the team monitoring the operation.
“Everyone was on edge, waiting for the strike.” And then — boom — communications went dead. Elon Musk had disabled the Starlink satellites we were using to control the drones.
The target lay barely an hour away, perhaps an hour and a half at most, yet Musk’s decision threatened to unravel the entire mission.
“Fedorov tried to talk him out of it, but Musk wouldn’t listen. Others scrambled to find alternative channels, but the Americans said Starlink was a private company, and they couldn’t intervene,” one witness in the bunker that night remembered.
Later, it would emerge that Musk hadn’t turned off the Starlink signal in Crimea — on the contrary, he had deliberately chosen not to activate it there so that the Russians wouldn’t be able to use their technology.
But during the operation itself, these nuances brought little comfort to the team. The team tried to turn the drones around and bring them back to the base, but only two of them made it. The Admiral Makarov remained in Sevastopol, intact.
Although not for long.
“The two drones that made it back [and] gathered invaluable intelligence on communications, navigation, the ship’s structure, and things like that. Ukraine’s Security Service and Navy set up a whole lab to study this information, taking it all into account, and enabling us to go back and attack Sevastopol within a month,” said one of the developers of the first surface drones.
Ukraine’s first foray into the new, high-tech phase of the war for the Black Sea may not have been a success, but a year on, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talked about his country’s two historic wins in 2023 during an end-of-year press conference: the start of accession negotiations with the European Union, and winning the battle for the Black Sea.
“Sometimes people fail to grasp and assess the importance of this operation. But everyone who knows about it in detail, both in Ukraine and internationally, speaks of it very highly. We have put an end to Russia’s dominance in Ukraine’s Black Sea,” Zelenskyy explained.
How did they manage to do it?
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