Ukraine has upgraded its unmanned surface vehicle, USV for its acronym in English, multipurpose Sea Baby to improve its naval combat capability and continue to attack the Russian fleet in the Black Sea. naval drones Sea Baby, manufactured by the Security Service of Ukraine, SBUhave increased their capacity to carry explosive loads and can do so at greater distances, almost completely covering the Black Sea.
Artem Dehtiarenkoa spokesman for the SBU, has told Ukrainian media that the Sea Baby has been upgraded to carry more than a ton of explosives over more than 1,000 kilometersPreviously, these USVs could only carry a load of 800 kg at a distance of about 800 kilometers“Today, the SBU can attack enemy ships virtually anywhere in the Black Sea,” the spokesman said.
According to Dehtiarenko, the Sea Babies have been used to attack 11 Russian ships since the war began. Among them, the corvettes Samum and Pavel Derzhavinthe oil tanker NEXTthe amphibious assault ship Olenegorsky Gornyakthe tugboat Nikolay Moore and the hydrographic and reconnaissance ship Vladimir Kozytskyi.
He also stressed, according to Ukrinform, that the Sea Baby They are not just kamikaze dronesbut constitute multipurpose platforms that can perform various combat missions. ‘The SBU has equipped some drones with Grad multiple rocket launchers, some are engaged in remote mining,’ he said. After the improvements received, the cost of each Sea Baby is $204,000, about 187,000 euros.
Last March, the SBU published images of a Sea Baby adapted with Grad rocket launcher being used from land, with the drone mounted on a wheeled platform. That same month, Moscow announced it would add “additional firearms, large-calibre machine gun rifle systems” to its Black Sea Fleet to “destroy enemy unmanned vehicles.”
Drones are being used on an unprecedented scale in this conflict and have allowed Ukraine, with a very small naval fleet consisting only of ocean patrol vessels and minesweepers, achieve significant successes against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. All of them thanks to the use of drones such as the Sea Baby, with which Ukraine also attacked the Crimean Bridge, or the Magura V5 with which he sank the second largest ship in the Russian Navy, the Cesar Kunikovlast March. The first, the guided missile cruiser Moscowwas sunk following a cruise missile attack in April 2022.