Ukraine says its unusual missile-armed naval drones scored hits on multiple Russian helicopters in the Black Sea

• Ukrainian naval drones fired missiles at – and hit – three Russian helicopters earlier this week.

• The first battle of its kind took place off the coast of Crimea.

• It is the latest achievement for Kiev’s naval drones, which have been adapted to carry missiles.

Ukrainian naval drones armed with heat-seeking missiles shot down two Russian helicopters and damaged a third over the Black Sea earlier this week, Kiev said Thursday.

The unusual encounter was the first known example of a Navy drone firing at and attacking an aircraft. The Ukrainian military previously reconfigured its unmanned boats for naval air defense.

The landmark combat operation took place Tuesday off the west coast of the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian naval drones equipped with rocket launchers fired at three helicopters, destroying two of them and damaging a third.

The crews of the destroyed helicopters, identified as Mi-8s, were killed, Ukraine’s military intelligence service, also known as HUR, said on Thursday. The damaged helicopter managed to land.

The HUR attributed the operation to a special unit called “Group 13”, which deployed the Magura V5, one of several naval drones in service with the Ukrainian army.

Earlier this week, HUR said a Magura V5 drone downed a single Mi-8 with R-73 air-to-air missiles. The R-73 is a decades-old short-range missile that uses infrared homing technology. Two days later, Ukraine announced that a second helicopter had been destroyed and a third damaged.

The HUR published a radio intercept that reportedly contained audio from one of the Mi-8 pilots after the Russian helicopter was hit. “There was a water launch,” the pilot says in the recording, describing how a rocket exploded near the plane. Business Insider could not independently verify the details of the operation.

This week’s incident is not the first time Ukrainian naval drones have engaged Russian helicopters in a firefight; Last month, Kiev shared images of a similar battle on the other side of Crimea, involving a drone equipped with a machine gun. However, the downing of an aircraft marks a new chapter in naval drone warfare.

Kiev’s domestically produced naval drones have played a key role in operations in the Black Sea. In addition to the Magura V5, Ukraine also uses other naval drones, such as the Sea Baby platform that is in service with Ukraine’s security service.

Ukraine has no traditional navy, so it relies on these naval drones to wage a successful campaign against Russian interests across the Black Sea, using them in attacks on Moscow’s warships, aircraft, and infrastructure such as bridges and oil platforms.

Through this asymmetric campaign, Ukraine’s drones have effectively driven Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet from its long-occupied headquarters in Crimea and forced it to move across the region to the port of Novorossiysk in southwestern Russia.

Ukraine has innovated with its naval drones through several modifications that make them more threatening, such as adding missile launchers to give them air defense capabilities. Some drones are also equipped with rocket launchers, guns and even other drones.

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