The Sea Baby drone
Screengrab via the Security Service of Ukraine Telegram
The domestically produced Sea Baby is another of Ukraine’s unmanned surface vehicles.
The drone is slightly longer than the Magura V5, coming in at six meters long (almost 20 feet), and it can hit a top speed of 49 knots (around 56 mph), according to Sutton.
It can travel up to 540 nautical miles and can carry a payload of 850 kg (around 1,870 pounds), Sutton says.
Earlier this month, Artem Dehtiarenko, a spokesperson for the Security Service of Ukraine, said the Sea Baby had undergone a significant upgrade, Ukrainian media reported.
“If we’re talking specifically of upgrading Sea Baby drones, which hit the Crimea bridge last year, as of today they have completely different characteristics, having become much more powerful,” he said.
“For example, a year ago our drone could carry about 800 kg of explosives to a distance of about 800 km, and today it is over 1,000 kg and over 1,000 km. So today the SBU can attack enemy ships virtually anywhere across the Black Sea,” he added.
Ukraine has said Sea Baby drones have been involved in a number of major strikes on Russian ships, including the patrol ship Pavel Derzhavin in October and the Olenegorsky Gornyak in August.
A Sea Baby was also credited with damaging Russian President Vladimir Putin’s prized Kerch Bridge, which links Crimea with the Russian mainland, last year.
Despite Ukraine’s successes, one expert previously told Business Insider that Russia still had some advantages in the naval arena.
Sebastian Bruns, a senior researcher at the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at Kiel University, said that while Ukraine’s operations in the Black Sea region have proven to be “powerful enough to sink or disable more than half of the high-value units of the Russian Black Sea fleet,” Russia “still has the upper hand holding ports and shipping lanes at risk through targeted missile strikes and sewing mines.”
“Ukraine won’t win the war in the maritime domain only, but it could surely lose it there,” he added.