In the world’s first unmanned ship clash, a Ukrainian naval drone destroyed a Russian explosive unmanned ship using a remotely controlled machine gun turret. This comes as the war in Ukraine has already seen widespread deployment of such unmanned surface ships in combat, along with swarms of flying attack drones and ground robots.
The unequal battle took place on September 12 when members of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence detected the Russian unmanned surface vessel (USV) in the Black Sea and ordered a Ukrainian Navy unmanned ship to intercept it. The Russian vessel was “positively identified” as an Orcan surface drone with a “jet ski-type steerable water jet” designed to ram targets and explode, according to naval analyst H.I. Sutton in Naval News.
These Orcan drones have already been used to attack Ukrainian ports and ships. These often work in coordination with flying drones, such as Russian Geran drones that provide aerial reconnaissance and can boost communication between drone operators and drone ships, Sutton explained.
In this case, the Russian drone was chased by a Ukrainian Sargan-3000 boat armed with a 12.7mm machine gun mounted on a remote weapons station manufactured by the Norwegian company Kongsberg.
“It was inevitable that there would be fighting between USVs,” Sutton told New Scientist. “We’ve seen the same thing in the air and on the ground.”
The Ukrainian Navy released a video showing the Sargan-3000 firing at the Russian drone from a distance of 1 kilometer, disabling the latter’s communications antenna before peppering the Russian drone until it sank, according to the Ukrainian government media platform United24.
