Sea Drone Swarms – Can NATO’s Navies Avoid Russia’s Fate?

Steven Wills

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With the probable loss of the missile patrol ship Sergey Kotov on March 5 in coastal waters near Feodosia, occupied Crimea, the Russian Black Sea fleet has lost three vessels in similar drone swarm attacks (and many more in cruise missile and aerial drone strikes.)

While many have proclaimed the drone campaign a revolution in naval warfare, the drones in fact continue a time-honored tactic of crewed small combatants working as a team to destroy a single, larger, and more capable opponent.

The Ukrainians have much to be proud of in their drone surface force campaign and have honed their drone swarm tactics to be remarkable effect. The Russian Black Sea fleet, on the other hand, seems to have learned little in the year since Ukrainian unmanned surface attack vessels were first introduced into combat.

Western navies are watching with care. When operating in contested coastal areas, US and NATO warships now:

• employ additional lookouts,
• assign additional weapons teams with machine guns to engage small-craft
• provide air or aviation drone coverage to detect incoming attackers, and
• institute maneuvering plans to minimize the threat posed by smaller, nimble, and well-armed opponents.

Drone technology has shown significant, evolutionary development. But for now, at least, Western warships are able to successfully engage and destroy similar drone swarms. Simply put, US and NATO navies are more capable and more competent than their Russian counterparts, as recent engagements in the Red Sea demonstrate.

The Japanese cruiser Haguro: A combat case study.

A good historical example of a small ship swarm sinking a larger ship was the May 1945 sinking of the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro by the British Royal Navy’s (RN) five-ship, 26th Destroyer Flotilla in Operation Dukedom.

Haguro was used in the waning days of World War II as a supply vessel serving isolated Japanese garrisons in the Andaman Islands from her base in Singapore. The Japanese planned to use the cruiser to evacuate the garrisons when she sailed on 14 May.

In normal circumstances, the heavily armed Haguro should have picked off and destroyed the RN vessels with ease, but she was in poor condition when she sailed. The guns from one of her turrets, damaged in an earlier battle, had been removed from the ship, weakening her firepower. She had recently run aground and been damaged. Finally, to make more room onboard for supplies, her torpedo tubes were removed and some of her main gun ammunition was also offloaded. Haguro was not ready for battle.

British intelligence was aware of Haguro’s mission and deployed the 26th Destroyer Flotilla and submarines to intercept her and her escorting destroyer Kamikaze.

Despite being warned to expect a British attack, Haguro was intercepted that night by the RN flotilla, which quickly surrounded and attacked the weakened cruiser with torpedoes and gunfire. Haguro was fooled into thinking one British destroyer had launched torpedoes and turned, imagining she would avoid them.

Instead, she headed straight into the arms of three other destroyers who launched torpedoes. Haguro was hit and left dead in the water, making her an easy target for the other, closing British ships. After six torpedo and numerous destroyer gun hits, including one that damaged the cruiser’s bridge and killed much of her command staff, the Haguro sank with heavy loss of life. One British destroyer suffered light damage.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet Versus the Drone Swarm

The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s biggest issue is an apparent failure to digest the lessons of previous drone attacks and so allow its surface ships to better respond.

The same poor Russian responses occurred in each of the three recent sinkings; the missile ship Ivanovets, the tank landing ship Tsesar Kunikov, and now the missile patrol ship Sergey Kotov.

The entire engagement was not captured in released Ukrainian drone footage, but in each case, Russian ships appear to be operating alone and unsupported by other units. The vessels do not appear to increase speed much to avoid drone attacks.

Return fire against the drones from Russian ships appears sporadic, and not concentrated against the threat closest to the ship. Anti-drone gunfire also seems to cease after a single hit, as if demoralized Russian sailors immediately abandon the fight.

Despite facing the drone swarm threat since August 2023, when another tank landing ship, Olenegorsky Gornyak, was seriously damaged by unmanned vessels in Novorossiysk, few improvements are apparent in Russian tactical responses. In the last attack on the Kotov, the ship does at least appear to have been properly darkened for night operations, and no lights that might serve as a target for the drones are seen.

What then for Western navies? No defense is perfect, surprise attacks at sea are always possible, and any one ship can be overwhelmed if enough attackers are employed.

That said, the tactics, techniques, and procedures of the US Navy and its allies and partner nation navies have been well developed over time to counter small surface craft swarms; both crewed and non-crewed (Iran has worked for some years on this tactic.)

Posting additional lookouts with night vision devices, the employment of advanced radars, and the posting of additional crew-served or automated weapon stations on the ship in heightened combat conditions can help to detect and engage small targets all the way to the ship’s sides.

Naval vessels can use their own drone aircraft and small surface ships to both detect and engage hostile drones before they can close the target. This is not a new idea — the destroyer-type ship was originally designed to protect larger vessels like battleships from torpedo boat swam attacks. Friendly drones may be employed today as a similar flotilla to protect larger crewed surface vessels.

The Russians have clearly failed to respond well to Ukrainian drone attacks, but as drone technology develops, US and allied navies will need to continue to develop effective drone responses. Any standstill invites nasty surprises in combat.

At some point, the drone swarm will become a coordinated air, surface, and sub-surface attack that any one ship will find hard to counter.

Complacency is not the order of the day and given its present procedures and further development of defense drones, the US and its allies can avoid the fate of the Russian Black Sea fleet; it has acted as a lab rat for this developing means of warfare, as has suffered much the same fate.