The drone revolution plays out at sea too. Ukrainian unmanned surface vessels (USVs) — the Magura V5 (GUR) and the Sea Baby (SBU) — have damaged and sunk a series of Black Sea Fleet ships since 2022. The effect was strategic: Russia moved its fleet from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, ~300 km east, beyond the effective reach of the sea drones.
As in the air, it turns on cost asymmetry: a USV worth tens of thousands threatens a warship worth hundreds of millions. A naval strategist argued in Russian publications that drones have fundamentally altered naval combat — the same conclusion that justified the BSV's creation in the land domain.
The Russian response
- Own USVs. Russian designers went "back to the drawing board": designs such as Vizier, Murena, Orcan and BEK-1000 are partly inspired by the Ukrainian boats.
- From target to carrier. The navy is contemplating USVs not only as a weapon but as a carrier of ISR sensors, drones, missiles and rockets — to go after Ukrainian USVs and shore targets.
- Counter-USV. Alongside its own drones the fleet is building countermeasures: helicopters, ship weapons and EW against the attacking sea drones.
- Embedding in the BSV. The maritime strike drone regiments (§ 11.2) with the Northern, Pacific, Black Sea and Baltic Fleets anchor this in the new service branch.
The Black Sea shows that a weaker party without a classic navy can still impose sea denial with cheap drones. For any navy with fixed ports and expensive ships that is an uncomfortable warning — the mirror of the counter-UAS challenge on land.
Northern Defence Affairs (Russian Vision of Unmanned Naval Warfare, 2026); RUSI, CEPA and open-source reporting on the Black Sea. Didactic summary.