In July, unmanned boats belonging to the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces landed at least one gun-armed unmanned ground vehicle on the Kinburn Spit, the westernmost Russian outpost in occupied Ukraine. As aerial drones watched, the UGV opened fire on a nearby Russian installation. No Ukrainian was anywhere near the beach.

Russia has now answered the raids, and it is aiming at the boats rather than the robots. Twice this month, Russian Geran-4 attack drones—jet-propelled, AI-assisted and fast enough to outrun most of what Ukraine can shoot back with—have hunted down the small craft that carry Ukrainian raiders and their machines to the spit. If the campaign continues, it could close the approach that has made the raids possible at all.

On or around 12 August and again on 15 August, Geran-4s spotted and attacked boats belonging to the Ukrainian navy flotilla operating in the waters around the Kinburn Spit, which juts into the western Black Sea from Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast.

Russian forces on the Kinburn Spit can monitor Ukrainian maritime traffic, making the narrow sandy spit a key outpost in the ongoing battle for the Black Sea's most important sea lanes. Ukrainian forces are determined to dislodge Russian forces from the spit. The Russians are determined to cling to their sandy outpost.

The Geran attacks are helping. The 12 August Geran raid targeted a Ukrainian navy CB-90 patrol boat. The 15 August Geran raid targeted a Ukrainian navy tugboat. It's unclear how much damage the Gerans inflicted, but it's worth noting that the CB-90 is just 15 m long; a tugboat might be slightly longer. A Geran's warhead weighs as much as 90 kg—probably enough to sink such a small vessel or burn it down to the keel.

The Ukrainian navy has only a few large warships, and they're all donated minehunters that have been waiting out the current wider war in the relative safety of European waters. The bulk of the Ukrainian fleet is made up of small patrol boats, auxiliaries such as tugs, and several types of unmanned surface vessels. These vessels defend waterways and ports and, more rarely, support offensive operations.

Spit raids

The July robot landing was one episode in a long Ukrainian raiding campaign along the spit—the kind of operation the Geran-4s are now trying to spoil.

The Geran strikes on Ukrainian boats could blunt these raids and help the Russians maintain their tenuous hold on the Kinburn Spit. The Russian strikes are part of a wider maritime campaign. Shortly after Ukrainian drone units began targeting the unregistered cargo ships and tankers belonging to Russia's shadow fleet, Russian drone and missile units retaliated—with devastating attacks on Ukrainian ports and the ships sailing to and from these ports in support of Ukraine's lucrative grain exports.

The Ukrainian attacks on the shadow fleet damaged hundreds of ships and effectively ground Russian Black Sea trade to a halt. But Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports effectively ground Ukrainian Black Sea trade to a halt, too.

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The new jet-propelled Geran-4s with their AI-assisted targeting were central to the effort. Their 500 km/h top speed makes them hard to shoot down. And the AI makes jamming far less useful than it used to be: the operator locks the drone onto a target, and from there the machine vision flies the attack, holding the lock even if Ukrainian electronic warfare severs the radio link in the final seconds.

The CB-90s in the Ukrainian inventory—more than 38 of them, most donated by Sweden, with others from Norway, the Netherlands and Ukrainian private donors—are valuable targets for the Russians. Armed with guns and armored against enemy small arms fire, the CB-90s can haul as many as 21 infantry at a max speed of around 40 knots. They're perfect for raiding far-flung enemy outposts such as those on the Kinburn Spit. But they're vulnerable to drone attack. If the CB-90 that a Geran struck last week indeed sank, it may have been the Ukrainian navy's first CB-90 loss.

Ukrainian forces aren't powerless to stop the Russians from spoiling Ukrainian raids on the spit. Geran-4s might be too fast for Ukrainian gun teams, armed light aircraft, and cheap interceptor drones, but they're not too fast for supersonic Ukrainian air force MiG-29 fighters.

Several of the MiGs patrol over the western Black Sea. One crashed recently, but others remain.