In the world’s first clash of the drone boats, a Ukrainian naval drone destroyed a Russian explosive drone boat using a remote-controlled machine gun turret. This comes as the war in Ukraine has already seen widespread deployment of such uncrewed surface vessels in combat, along with swarms of flying attack drones and ground robots.
The lopsided battle took place on September 12 when members of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence detected the Russian uncrewed surface vessel (USV) in the Black Sea and directed a Ukrainian Navy drone boat to intercept. The Russian vessel was “positively identified” as an Orcan surface drone with a “jet ski type steerable water jet” designed to ram targets and explode, according to naval analyst HI Sutton in Naval News.
Such Orcan drones have already been used to attack Ukrainian ports and ships. These often work in coordination with flying drones such as Russian Geran drones that provide aerial reconnaissance and can boost communication between drone operators and drone boats, Sutton explained.
In this case, the Russian drone was hunted down by a Ukrainian Sargan-3000 drone boat armed with a 12.7 mm machine gun mounted on a remote weapon station made by the Norwegian company Kongsberg.
“It was inevitable that there would be USV-on-USV combat,” Sutton told New Scientist. “We have seen the same in the air and on the ground.”
The Ukrainian Navy released a video showing the Sargan-3000 firing upon the Russian drone from a distance of one kilometer, disabling the latter’s communications antenna before riddling the Russian drone until it sank, according to the Ukrainian government media platform United24.
Ukrainian media have described the Sargan-3000 drone as being able to reach speeds of 40 to 55 knots and travel up to 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) while carrying a payload of 450 kilograms (992 pounds), United24 reported.
The multipurpose Ukrainian drone can also be equipped with an explosive payload for ramming attacks—the Ukrainian Navy claimed one such drone successfully struck and sank a Russian border patrol ship named the Izumrud in July 2026.
Ukraine has focused heavily on developing and deploying drone boats to wage asymmetric warfare against the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet of warships, sinking some and forcing the surviving ships to hunker down in port. Ukraine has also used a combination of aerial and surface drones to attack ships transporting sanctioned Russian oil and gas, along with targeting ships carrying supplies to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Naval drone innovations have also extended to Ukraine using drone boats to deploy ground robots in amphibious assaults and using uncrewed surface vessels as motherships for launching FPV drones to attack Russian positions near the Black Sea.
But Russia has similarly adapted by deploying its naval drones to go after Ukrainian targets—and Europe as a whole may face growing threats from such naval drones in the future. In August, a Russian drone boat loaded with explosives was disabled by a Romanian fighter jet after it drifted near a vital European natural gas platform in the Black Sea.
Meanwhile, drone boats have also participated in the US-Israeli war with Iran. The US military’s drone boats made their combat debut by attacking an Iranian port facility in July, along with rescuing a pair of US Army pilots after their helicopter gunship was taken down by an Iranian flying Shahed drone near the contested Strait of Hormuz. However, such US military weapons are unlikely to seriously challenge Iran’s ability to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
