Ukraine is facing off against Russia's formidable Black Sea Fleet. How are Ukraine's cheap unmanned sea drones and Western missiles taking down Russian warships worth hundreds of millions of dollars?
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00:00 Ukraine says it's destroyed about one-third of Russia's warships and it's doing this without a full-fledged Navy.
00:07 How are cheap unmanned sea drones taking down $200 million warships?
00:12 And how has this asymmetrical advantage helped them in the Black Sea?
00:17 I'm Sam Feldman. I'm a U.S. Navy veteran and a defense editor with Business Insider.
00:22 Let's look at the balance of power between Russia's Navy and Ukrainian forces.
00:28 The Black Sea is a critical fight between Russia and Ukraine.
00:35 Russia is using its naval power to threaten to blockade the exports that are central to Ukraine's economy.
00:44 It's also using its warships to strike targets throughout Ukraine.
00:48 Ukraine is working to neutralize that overwhelming advantage.
00:53 On the ground, Russia has regained the momentum given Ukraine's shortages of artillery and air defense missiles.
01:00 But in the waters of the Black Sea, the opposite is true.
01:04 There, Ukraine has gained the momentum.
01:07 Russia borders the Black Sea.
01:12 Its Black Sea ports account for 30% of its seaborne trade, including oil.
01:17 Ukraine is one of the world's largest rain-dex borders.
01:21 Its trade accounts for $28 billion annually.
01:24 And before the war, 98% of that trade moved via its Black Sea ports.
01:30 Three NATO countries border the Black Sea.
01:33 And were Russian attacks to affect those countries' shipping or territorial waters, it would likely trigger an international crisis.
01:41 The Black Sea fleet is composed of about 40 ships and seven submarines.
01:50 Let's talk about a couple classes that are used against Ukraine.
01:54 The Admiral Grigorovich frigates are a newer ship class.
01:58 There's Kilo-class submarines, and those can fire calibers.
02:02 There's two missile corvettes.
02:04 These corvettes are about 200 feet long, half the length of a frigate.
02:08 And then there's landing ships that are useful for moving troops and material.
02:14 The Rapucha class, for example, can move up to 10 T-72 tanks and 340 troops.
02:21 The Black Sea fleet also has air defenses, aircraft, and naval infantry.
02:28 Russia uses seals and dolphins for harbor defense.
02:35 These animals are useful at spotting an intruder, like an enemy diver.
02:40 They're also useful for assisting Russian divers on a mission,
02:45 but they're not effective against an incoming drone boat like Ukraine is using.
02:50 Russia keeps its dolphin training program under wraps,
02:55 and we know about its presence because of satellite images showing pens of dolphins near Russian naval bases in the Black Sea.
03:04 The U.S. Navy also has a marine mammal program of seals and dolphins that it uses for harbor defense,
03:11 but it rarely provides outside access to the animals in their facilities.
03:16 Ukraine has principally used two weapons to fight back.
03:24 The first are missiles.
03:26 It used its Neptune missiles to strike and sink the Black Sea fleet's flagship, the cruiser Moskva.
03:32 That effectively forced Russian ships to abandon the northern Black Sea.
03:37 It has continued to use long-range missiles to strike ships in Crimea.
03:42 It's also developed what are essentially the first modern exploding naval drones.
03:47 They are low-profile fast boats loaded with explosives.
03:51 They can reach further than Ukraine's missiles.
03:54 They explode at a vessel's waterline and trigger flooding.
03:58 They're remote-controlled by pilots staring at the drone's video feed.
04:02 There's only about two feet visible above.
04:05 That's low enough it's hard to spot on a warship's radar.
04:09 They can maneuver into targets at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour, and they pack an enormous punch.
04:16 The newest one carries 1,900 pounds of explosive,
04:19 or almost double the likely amount of explosive used in the USS Cole bombing in 2000.
04:25 It killed 17 and almost sank the destroyer.
04:28 A ship's crew has to be on lookout for this threat to be able to stop it in time.
04:32 Okay, so here's somebody who started a cell phone video, a crew member,
04:39 and look, they've got a searchlight in the water scanning for where they think the drones are.
04:44 Now you're seeing the crew firing machine guns, but they're trying to fire, put as much fire in the water as possible.
04:51 This is a night attack. These are black vessels low in the water.
04:54 There's no light on these vessels, and so that searchlight's going to be important to try to spot it.
05:00 Here we're seeing just a lot of wild, mounted, and handheld machine gun fire,
05:04 and there we're seeing what appears to be one of the first hull impacts of a blast.
05:09 We're definitely seeing some kind of on-board fire. That's a really bad sign.
05:14 One of the dangers here is that now the ship has some kind of blast, is likely taking on water,
05:20 and meanwhile they recognize there's more bomb boats that are coming in.
05:25 This is a terrifying situation for them.
05:28 And there we've got another blast. To have any hope of saving the ship,
05:32 they're going to need crew that are going to those spaces and closing off any hatches to try to seal the spaces from others.
05:40 If the flooding is going to go through more of the ship, all the weight of that water is going to bring the ship down,
05:46 and it's going to roll over or it's going to sink.
05:50 [Music]
05:52 Here we've got the view from the camera of a drone moving extremely quickly in on this missile corvette,
05:59 and then it's hitting the stern. That's likely this blast we're now seeing.
06:03 So it's getting right up against the stern. These are probably crew-served machine guns.
06:07 And once again, they've proven ineffective. We're having another stern blast on this missile corvette.
06:12 We're already seeing the damage from a prior strike.
06:15 So once the hull's integrity has been broken, then a secondary blast at the same spot is going to be devastating.
06:23 There's crews that are going to be responding to that area to try to minimize the flooding.
06:28 And so another attack might kill those responders. It may also just widen the gap that's already been created.
06:35 This is going to lead to a total loss of the vessel unless it's stopped.
06:39 [Music]
06:42 Ukraine has continued to update its sea drones.
06:45 Its latest version can carry more explosives.
06:48 It has a longer range, up to about 600 miles, and it can ride in rougher seas.
06:53 High seas complicate the effort to spot bomb boats.
06:57 Normally, a radar technician dials back the sensitivity so as not to get radar returns from waves.
07:04 But in a high sea state where the waves are, say, three feet high,
07:08 they're going to have to look through the radar noise created by those waves to spot a two-foot tall bomb boat.
07:15 [Music]
07:19 We can only guess what the battle for the Black Sea has cost Russia financially,
07:25 but it's probably measured in billions of dollars.
07:28 For example, the repair needed for just one damaged Kilo-class submarine is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
07:35 The cost to Ukraine is comparatively small. Ukraine doesn't have a navy.
07:39 Ukraine crowdfunds for its sea drones, and each one is estimated to cost about $200,000.
07:47 That's much cheaper than a guided missile.
07:49 The Harpoon missiles that the U.S. has provided to Ukraine, for example, cost about $1.4 million apiece.
07:58 One Patriot intercept missile costs about $4 million.
08:03 [Music]
08:06 Russia has moved slowly to adopt defensive measures.
08:09 It's laid out physical barriers like floating booms and sunken barges to try to narrow its harbor mouth,
08:14 all to try to prevent the drones from reaching moored ships.
08:17 Helicopters and patrol aircraft scan the seas around the port, and ships man crew-served machine guns.
08:24 And there is evidence of electronic jamming to try to confuse the drones' navigation or to disrupt its steering control.
08:30 But Ukraine will likely adapt.
08:33 It's a huge surprise that Ukraine is now forcing Russia to relocate its vessels out of Crimea
08:39 in order to keep them from getting damaged by missiles and drones.
08:43 Russia's done considerable damage with its Black Sea fleet.
08:46 Its ships have fired long-range caliber missiles against targets throughout Ukraine.
08:50 The caliber itself has about 1,000 pounds of explosives, but it can also carry nuclear payloads.
08:57 There's also evidence that Russia has fired its ship-launched Zircon hypersonic missile against Ukraine.
09:04 That missile moves at speeds higher than five times the speed of sound,
09:09 making it more difficult to intercept than other missiles.
09:12 Don't count the Black Sea fleet out.
09:14 They're still significant ships that are able to fire a lot of missiles and cause a lot of damage inside Ukraine.
09:22 But they're having to do it from farther away now, and Ukraine has them running scared.
09:27 What we're seeing in Ukraine isn't a passing fad.
09:32 This is a new emerging threat that is likely to only become more pervasive and deadly.
09:39 The reason is just the dangerously simple logic at play here.
09:43 If it only takes a couple million dollars to build swarms of drone boats that can knock out a $2 billion destroyer,
09:51 many countries are going to build those fleets.
09:54 And it's not just countries like Ukraine without navies.
09:57 This is a threat that is only going to become larger as more countries get this technology,
10:02 and it's going to be really considerable for operations near shore.
10:05 It may force some of the most advanced navies, including the United States,
10:09 to either develop technologies that can counter it or to operate further from shore
10:14 to give itself more space from these attacks.
10:17 Ukraine has received considerable support.
10:19 The UK and France have provided their long-range storm shadow missiles,
10:24 and those have struck ships.
10:27 Those struck the fleet headquarters and shipyards.
10:32 Western partners also routinely share intelligence with Ukraine,
10:35 and it's almost certain that that is playing a role in the targeting of Russian ships.
10:40 There's also one report by the Washington Post that Ukraine's sea drones were developed jointly
10:45 with the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies.
10:50 Which country has the balance of power?
10:53 It's really important to remember that the Black Sea Fleet is powerful, and it is powerful now,
10:58 and it has, even in its new home ports that it's being pushed to,
11:02 it has the long-range strike weapons to continue to barrage Ukraine.
11:06 It's hardly knocked out of the fight, but it is sidelined.
11:09 It's a powerful asset whose brunt has been dulled.
11:13 Russia is starting to take measures that are going to complicate Ukraine's attacks on its Black Sea Fleet.
11:18 But will it stop the attacks? That's unlikely.
11:21 Ukraine is evolving and is really at the cutting edge of naval strategy,
11:26 spearheading a technology that may in time become as much of a threat to surface ships as guided missiles.
11:33 The balance of power lies with Ukraine.
11:35 Ukraine has seized the momentum, and it's sidelined the Black Sea Fleet.
11:39 That's a victory in and of itself.
11:43 [Russian radio chatter]
11:50 [gunfire]
11:56 [music]