Ukraine Drives Next Gen Robotic Warfare

A wave of change is coming for military institutions everywhere, but the implications for the Pacific theatre are particularly interesting.

Over the past year, I have been examining the strategic and battlefield lessons of the war in Ukraine and then translating these lessons so they might be applied in the Pacific theatre. You can read my previous articles on this topic here. In this article, I focus on recent robotic warfare events in Ukraine and assess their relevance for future operations in the Pacific.

From the start of the 2022 Russian invasion, uncrewed aerial vehicles have been used in a wide range of missions by both the Ukrainians and Russians. As the war has progressed, the Ukrainian navy began to experiment with, and has now mastered, the development and employment of uncrewed maritime strike systems. A range of small boats and semi-submersibles have been employed to strike Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea, forcing the Russians to restrict their operations in the western parts of that body of water.

This explosion in the use of autonomous and remotely operated systems in Ukraine has seen both Ukraine and Russia develop the ability to not only produce millions of drones annually, but it has seen the development of a rapid adaptation battle, where drones are developed, deployed and evolved with an increasing tempo. The Cambrian Explosion in Drones in Ukraine has also forced military institutions around the world to reconsider their investment in such systems, and to re-assess the balance of traditional, exquisite systems against uncrewed capabilities in military organisations, and how they might improve their defences against massed, uncrewed systems in the air, land and sea domains.

Another more interesting trend has arisen which will force policy makers and military strategists to undertake an even more careful analysis of Ukraine war trends, and how these trends apply in other theatres, particularly the Pacific. This trend, robotic teaming, has emerged over the past year with the advent on drone-on-drone combat in the air and on the ground. In particular, several recent combat actions in Ukraine provide insights that need to be studied and translated for their employment in the massive ocean expanses, tens of thousands of kilometres of littoral, thousands of large and small islands and at least three continents that constitute the Pacific theatre.

Transformative Events in Robotic Warfare

The Battle of the Black Sea Oil Platforms: December 2024. In a statement issued in March 2024, the Security Service of Ukraine described how its Sea Baby drones had been continuously evolved, noting that “the Sea Baby 2024 is a new-generation drone that is enhanced and even more lethal for the enemy." On 7 December 2024, videos appeared on social media of Ukrainian uncrewed naval vessels attacking Russian oil rigs in the Black Sea that were also being used as observation and surveillance platforms. While Ukraine has been employing successive generations of uncrewed naval vessels (also known as uncrewed surface vessels or USV) to push the Russian Black Sea fleet out of the western parts of that body of water, two elements of this attack stood out.

First, the USV used in the attack were of a type not previously seen in any public media. It appeared to have a trimaran arrangement that included large outriggers on each side. As H.I. Sutton has speculated, these could also be clamshell doors for a UAV hangar amidships. But these vessels also displayed another unique capability. The USV are observed in the video reversing up to the Russian platforms. As H.I. Sutton describes in an 18 December 2024 analysis of the attack, “the logical explanation is that this allowed them to drop an explosive charge directly next to the platform’s supports. This was possibly a time delayed, or depth delayed, charge. Since the USV was already pointing away from the platforms it would be able to accelerate away to safety.”

The second new feature observed in this attack is that the USV appears to have launched at least one, and possibly more, FPV drone that conducted a quick reconnaissance of the platform. These drones then shifted to attacking the sensors on the platform, and the Russian personnel installing the sensors.

The Battle of Lyptsi: Late December 2024. In late December (the actual date has not been reported), reports have emerged of a Ukrainian attack on Russian positions near the village of Lyptsi in the Kharkiv region. A spokesman from Ukraine's National Guard described how Ukrainian forces had conducted their first ground attack exclusively using robotic systems. According to the Kyiv Independent, the attack utilised dozens of uncrewed ground combat vehicles (UGV) and FPV drones. Ukrainian troops used UGVs armed with machine guns, while other UGVs laid or cleared mines along sections of the frontline near Lyptsi. The UGVs were supported throughout the mission by FPV drones. This combination of ground and aerial recon and attack capabilities means that the operation was air-land robotic mission.

USV’s as Anti-Aircraft Systems. In several engagements in 2024, Ukrainian Sea Baby drones were observed firing anti-aircraft guns and missiles at Russian helicopters, damaging the aircraft and injuring the onboard personnel. Then, in early January 2025, the Ukrainians were able to shoot down two Russian helicopters employing a similar methodology. The Russian helicopters were downed by See Dragon missiles(a short-range, infrared-guided air-to-air missile that Ukrainian has adapted to be fired from USV), that were fired from a Ukrainian-made Magura V5 naval strike drone, according to Ukraine's military intelligence agency. In a 2 January statement, the Ukrainian’s announced that two helicopters were shot down and one damaged.

The Crimea Strikes: 6 January 2025. In early January, three Russian air defence systems were attacked by the Ukrainians. The attacks, which took place in coastal areas of the occupied southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, were apparently executed by Ukrainian naval drone carriers. The drone carriers were able to launch FPV drones which then proceeded to travel towards the Russian aid defence systems, including two Pantir-S1 air defence weapons, and then destroy or disable them with explosive warheads. According to a report published by the Kyiv Post, the attacks against the Russians occurred near the Kherson village of Khorly, which is approximately 80 kilometres from the coast.

These events represent a next-generation approach to robotic warfare. Until this point, uncrewed systems have acted either alone or with similar systems in a single domain. Henceforth, we should expect that the employment of drone carriers will become more common in the ground, sea and air domains. This makes a lot of sense for many forms of missions, particularly if long endurance drones in one environment are best placed to transport shorter endurance, but heavily armed and high speed, drones that use a different domain. Additionally, given the probable lessons that the Ukrainians learned in the Battle of Lyptsi, more widespread employment of robotic systems with fewer (or no) humans for close combat activities.