A modified Jet Ski-style vehicle laden with explosives was found floating off the coast of Turkey, near Istanbul.
The personal watercraft, believed to belong to the Ukrainian military, may offer a unique insight into how Ukraine has been producing makeshift sea drones.
Photos of the vehicle show an “electro-optical /infrared camera ball above the handlebars,” as well as “other sensors,” H I Sutton, a naval analyst, wrote on his website.
The vehicle’s seats have been replaced by control boxes and a Starlink antenna, and two black cylinders likely to be explosive charges have been attached to each side of its front, Sutton wrote, adding: “Extra fuel tanks are also likely present.”
Sutton identified the craft as a Yamaha WaveRunner.
The vehicle had likely been drifting for some time, considering its likely operating area near Crimea and its peeling paintwork, a report in The War Zone said.
The Turkish Gendarmerie is examining the craft, per IHA.
Ukraine’s sea drone fleet
Ukraine has used sea drones to great effect to disrupt Russian Naval activities in the Black Sea, sinking or damaging a number of ships.
This type of uncrewed maritime system has had a “relatively large effect in the war for Ukraine,” Sebastian Bruns, a senior researcher at the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at Kiel University, told Business Insider.
“These drones provide a way to create ‘no go zones’ for the Russian Navy,” he said.
Lacking a conventional navy, Ukraine has looked to innovative ways to counter Russia’s sea power. By marshaling their sea drones into squads, Ukraine has hoped to replicate the abilities of a single warship.
Ukraine has also developed several new types of naval drones, including the “Sea Baby,” credited with damaging the crucial Kerch Bridge last year, and the Magura V5, which was involved in hunting down the corvette Ivanovets earlier this year.
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,” Bruns said, 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.
