Secret Base for Ukrainian Naval Drones on Dnipro River Revealed

The Times has reported on a secret Ukrainian naval base on the Dnipro River controlled by Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (HUR), where numerous naval drones were shown by a HUR representative who disclosed how these types of drone were used to sink Russian naval vessels.

The report included a video that showed dozens of Magura V5 unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) – commonly known as naval drones. This type of drone was made and designed in Ukraine using Western technology.

An operator, identified by the callsign “13,” recalled a Nov. 10 operations on where the drones were used to sink two vessels off the coast of Chornomorske in occupied Crimea.

He said the Russian forces first attacked the drones with small caliber weapons, but the drones were able to accelerate and evade the attacks so the enemy switched to larger caliber weapons. This also failed allowing two drones to strike a Russian Shark and a Serna-class landing craft, with a third drone exploding on the docks.

“The joy was incredible. It was my life’s goal to sink a Russian ship and we sank two of them at once. And as far as I know, no one had ever done this before anywhere. Now we have a new goal — to sink something bigger,” said the operator.

Naval drones in particular have made and continue to make a significant contribution to the erosion of Russia’s naval dominance in the Black Sea.

Other Topics of Interest

Ukraine’s Mil-Tech Dilemma: High Demand but Lacks Budget

Industry representatives said Ukraine’s budget is insufficient to cover what companies can produce and that’s only one of the many issues facing the country’s budding arms manufacturers.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) previously released details in a recent documentary about a July attack on Kerch Bridge using “Sea Baby” naval drones - as reported earlier by Kyiv Post. 

Coupled with successful missile strikes on occupied Crimea that saw the destruction of numerous Russian vessels, Russia has since withdrawn the bulk of its Black Sea Fleet from its main, well-equipped port of Sevastopol. The alternative location, in Novorossiysk on the Russian mainland, lacks the equipment to carry out operations to the same scale particularly in the loading of Kalibr missiles, which have been used to attack Ukrainian infrastructure, onto naval vessels.