Ukrainian Sea Baby unmanned surface vessel (USV), an exclusive weapon used by the Security Service of Ukraine, turned out to be not just a suicide weapon destroying the Crimean bridge with a ton of explosive payload or a carrier of 122mm artillery rockets, but also a minelayer drone.
The previously undisclosed function, implemented back in 2023, was revealed by the Wall Street Journal, whose journalists spoke to the drone operators and developers. They say, Sea Baby has already blown up four russian warships with the naval mines it had deployed.
Read more: Updated Sea Baby 2024 Naval Drone: One Ton of Explosives with a Range of Over 1000 km
On a note from Defense Express, with this revelation many mysterious incidents of the recent past click into place. In particular, it was the mines that caused the destruction of the Samum air cushion missile ship in September 2023. There were also photos that confirmed that the ship had lost the capability to move on its own, but the moment of the attack itself was never shown, and the russians attributed the hit to a sea mine.
A similar situation occurred with the Pavel Derzhavin patrol ship of Project 22160, which allegedly blew up on its own sea mine in October last year. Then, the tug dispatched to rescue this patrol ship also blew up on a mine.
Notably, both the patrol and missile ships caught mines on the outer roadstead of the port in the russian-occupied city of Sevastopol.
Another victim of an explosion on a mine laid by Sea Baby was an unnamed minesweeper, though the journalists note that the russian forces had only two of these and they belonged to the modern type.
Taking into account the ship composition of the Black Sea Fleet of russia, there are only three naval trawlers, one Project 12660 launched in 1986 and two Projects 266ME launched in 2000 and 2006, respectively. Apparently, it was one of these younger ships, either the Valentin Pikul or the Vice-Admiral Zakharin.
A mine was able to land a hit even on a specialized anti-mine ship because the explosive devices in question are of modern type, with a weight of 180 kg and encased in plastic.
Read more: Ukraine May Use the Magura Drones in the Sea of Azov
