On April 3, 2024, the local coast guard in the vicinity of the village of Tuzla (Northern Dobruja, Romania) discovered a sea drone of unknown origin, manufactured based on an old search and rescue motorboat. The boat was sailing upside down.
Then this surface craft was towed to the sea range Capu Midia, located 14 kilometers from the Port of Constanța, where it was detonated on April 5, 2024, after specialists from the Romanian Ministry of Defense conducted relevant investigations.
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This incident became known on April 6, 2024, through publications in the press. At the moment, the authors of the specialized portal Defense Romania in their publication were only able to record the fact of a general statement from the Romanian Ministry of Defense that "it was definitely a maritime drone."
The episode looks peculiar - an unidentified remotely controlled surface vessel, unlike any of the known types of maritime drones of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, drifted in the Black Sea, near an area of intense civilian shipping activity.
At the same time, this device was created based on a search and rescue boat, and from the side of any vessel, it could be identified that way, creating an even greater danger.
This story became particularly peculiar after the russian Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies on its unofficial bmpd resource published some information about this incident.
According to their estimates, the creation of this device involved using an old 3-ton displacement rescue boat, the Starlink terminal was used for control system, and most importantly, this device was equipped with the combat part of the first-generation Soviet anti-ship missile P-15.
If the assessment that it was indeed the warhead from the Soviet P-15 anti-ship missile is correct, then this implies two things.
Firstly, it refers to a rather dangerous device, as the P-15 in its basic version had a 480-kilogram warhead with a high-explosive anti-tank filling, the P-15M Termit had a 513-kilogram warhead with similar filling.
Secondly, considering that in the Black Sea region, only two countries (russia and Romania) currently possess P-15 missiles (either in storage or in service), it is likely that the russians created this remotely operated surface vessel. And this could pose additional threats to navigation, including towards the Ukrainian ports of the Black Sea.
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