Ukraine's homemade sea drones often fail, but they're so cheap that it doesn't matter, expert says

• Ukraine's likely sinking of the Ivanovets shows the advantage of sea drones.
• Russia has destroyed many of them, one expert said — but they're cheap enough that it doesn't matter.
• The sea drones also have a longer reach than more expensive cruise missiles, he said.

Ukraine's home-developed naval drones are offering vital capabilities that cruise missiles just don't have, a naval expert told Business Insider.

This could have a sizable impact on Ukraine's ongoing efforts to subdue Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

On Tuesday, the UK's Ministry of Defence said that Ukraine had "almost certainly" sunk the Russian corvette Ivanovets using uncrewed surface vehicles — or naval drones.

Ukraine shared spectacular footage of the apparent attack last week, but Russia is yet to comment.

Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's head of military intelligence, told The War Zone that the attack used home-developed Maritime Autonomous Guard Unmanned Robotic Apparatuses, known as MAGURA V5 naval drones.

Sidharth Kaushal, a naval expert at the UK's Royal United Services Institute, outlined Ukraine's sea drones' limitations and advantages to BI.

He said that Ukraine appears to be losing a lot of them to Russia's shipboard gunfire, helicopters, and aircraft.

Russia's ships are "dealing with these things fairly handily," he said. "Most attacks end in failure."

Still, they provide a newer challenge, he said. "Most vessels are optimized over the years against airborne threats, and to an extent subsurface threats," he said. But a "low observable" surface-based attack is — if not revolutionary — "a new challenge for vessels."

Successful attacks have primarily been on smaller vessels like patrol vessels, corvettes, and occasionally landing ships, he said, adding that the jury's still out on whether they present the best line of attack for "larger, well-defended targets."

But, he said, because they're so much cheaper than either a cruise missile or a submarine, they can be expended at a much higher rate in order to harass Russia's fleet.

Ukraine has not said how much each MAGURA V5 costs, but it's unlikely to come anywhere close to the roughly $1-2 million price tag attached to firing a Harpoon or one of Ukraine's scarce Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles.

Long-range targeting

At the same time, Ukraine can use the drones "at very long distances," Kaushal said.

"The Ukrainians don't have very many cruise missiles that can target things at the ranges that they've been able to go after" with sea drones, he added.

The MAGURA V5 is advertised as having a range of about 500 miles, compared to up to roughly 150 miles for a Harpoon.

While Ukraine hasn't said where the claimed attack on the Ivanovets was launched from — a vessel out at sea, or a port — the nearest Ukrainian port is more than 130 miles from where it reportedly sank.

One drone pilot told CNN that the MAGURA V5 is capable of undertaking long journeys on autopilot, with the human pilot only taking control on the final approach.

Ukraine appears to have been using naval drones since at least May, when Russia publicized footage of an unsuccessful attack on the Russian warship Ivan Khurs.

The sheer distance of that attempt — estimated at around 200 miles from the nearest unoccupied Ukrainian shore — demonstrated the potential reach of the technology.

Since then, sea drones have been involved in multiple high-profile attacks, including reported strikes on two Russian landing ships in November.

Punching above your weight

While the apparent sinking of the Ivanovets isn't likely to be a game changer, given its size and likely role as a patrol vessel, the attack was still notable.

The ship had advanced uplink technology for conveying targeting data to other craft, the UK MOD said in its update on Tuesday. And, per Ukraine's Defense Intelligence, it cost Russia about $70 million.

Basil Germond, a maritime security expert at the UK's Lancaster University, told Business Insider that the significance of the reported strike lies beyond the ship itself.

"This attack is symbolically and politically significant because it demonstrates that Ukraine, not Russia, is having the initiative in the Black Sea and Crimea," he said, adding: "This impacts on Putin's credibility but also plays in favor of Ukraine's diplomacy to get more Western support."