Simon Shuster
“Here she comes,” said the drone operator. “Get ready to grab it.” From the shore we could see the vessel coming, its nose bobbing in the waves as it approached the naval base. A few soldiers stood beside me on the beach, squinting and sweating in the midday sun. One of them, a technician from Ukraine’s military intelligence service, waded into the water with a pair of rubber boots and let the machine float into his arms. Then he stroked it gently, like a doting father, and looked back to gauge my reaction.
Up close, the weapon looked small and strange, about as threatening as a research vessel meant to measure the movement of tides. No gun barrels stuck out of it. No shark-teeth decals to match its deadly reputation. No sign of the explosives such boats are designed to carry. Yet here it was, the Magura, scourge of the Russian navy, the seaborne drone that has helped change the course of the war in Ukraine, pierce Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea, and revolutionize maritime warfare.
Though it has no large warships in its navy, Ukraine has used these drones to outmaneuver one of the greatest naval powers in the world. Produced at a cost of around $200,000 apiece, the weapons have damaged or destroyed about two dozen Russian warships—as much as a third of the Black Sea fleet, including large landing ships and missile carriers worth billions of dollars. These strikes have forced the rest of the Russian navy to pull back from Ukrainian shores, all but conceding defeat in the greatest sea battle Europe has seen since World War II.
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