Russia has no significant capabilities to use naval drones – Group 13 commander

The Group 13 maritime drone unit commander discussed changes in the war in the Black Sea and the deployment of USV units by the Russian Navy.

A Militarnyi correspondent spoke with the unit commander, known by his call sign “Thirteenth,” during a closed presentation of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine.

In May, reports appeared about the formation of the first specialized regiments of naval unmanned systems within the Russian Navy fleets, tasked with patrolling, destroying surface vessels, and intercepting enemy naval drones.

In particular, to intercept Ukrainian maritime drones, the Black Sea Fleet Command initiated the development of a drone carrier for FPV drones to search for and destroy surface targets.

“I know that the Russians are working on using drones to counter other drones. To use the same FPV drones. We need to look at our enemy objectively – this is a strong adversary. We can confidently say that the development is ongoing and our unit and manufacturer are also working,” says Thirteenth, adding that Russia does not yet have the capacity to deploy naval drones.

“Unmanned regiments exist on paper. They don’t currently have significant capabilities to use USVs. They are quite stubbornly working on it, but today we cannot say they have any significant success.”

Thirteenth shared that the main means of combating Ukrainian attack drones are large-caliber machine guns on ships. Russian naval aviation became a significant problem at some point, but now “this issue has been resolved.”

The dominance of drones in the Black Sea prompted the Russian military to hide the entire fleet in the bays of Sevastopol and Novorossiysk.

“The enemy can only reach a maximum of 20 miles from the easternmost basing points. This suggests that even 800+ kilometers away, the enemy is afraid of being hit. I think we can now talk about controlling more than 90% of the Black Sea,” Thirteenth noted.

This has made the search for targets for maritime drones much more difficult. According to the Group 13 operator, for another six months, only Russian Navy ships were considered for destruction, but now work is underway on small enemy patrol boats.

“We are already working on all targets. Now it is difficult to find even air targets. While fighter aircraft are still being actively used, after the downing of helicopters on December 31, as soon as the enemy sees drones with missiles, they are not used at all,” the intelligence officer adds.

At the presentation of the Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, which took place with the participation of the Thirteenth, Magura v7 drones in anti-aircraft modification with AIM-9 missiles, as well as a model with a remote-controlled machine gun turret, were publicly presented. The unit commander spoke about the concept and the choice of this particular direction:

“There are a lot of ideas, the main thing is not to be sprayed among them. It is important to focus on certain key tasks and prioritize them. For example, at one time, there was an idea to create minesweepers, but the SSU had already been successful in this area. Then I said, let’s focus on missiles. We left the project, which was already effective in another unit, and began to put all our efforts into it,” the Group 13 commander pointed out.

Read more on the Magura W6P maritime reconnaissance drone with a non-standard design, which was first presented along with other models of the Magura series at a private presentation of the Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine.