From left, British Royal Navy Adm. Sir Keith Blount, deputy supreme allied commander Europe, U.S. Ambassador to Italy Jack Markell and Adm. Stuart Munsch, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and Allied Joint Forces Command Naples, speak with reporters aboard U.S. 6th Fleet flagship USS Mount Whitney on April 9, 2024. (Alison Bath/Stars and Stripes)
NAPLES, Italy — Ukraine’s successful drone and missile attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet are being studied by the U.S. Navy and NATO as the West develops strategies to confront potential Russian aggression, the service’s top admiral in Europe said.
Ukraine is locked in a bitter stalemate on land, with dwindling munition supplies and Russian forces entrenched in much of the country’s east. But it has found success at sea worth learning from and applying globally, analysts say.
Without a traditional navy, Ukraine has managed to sink or disable nearly one-third of the fleet, said Adm. Stuart Munsch, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and Allied Joint Forces Command Naples.
They’ve done it by starting with low-cost technology and adding sophisticated weaponry to their operations as the war has developed.
The attacks have pushed the Russians further east in the Black Sea and opened a maritime corridor to allow grain shipments, which Munsch said was a significant achievement.
“They’ve also demonstrated how to put the Russians in such a box so that they no longer operate freely,” said Munsch, speaking with reporters at a celebration of NATO’s 75th anniversary aboard the amphibious command ship USS Mount Whitney on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian maritime strategy was a particular focus of the recent Black Sea Maritime Forum in Bucharest, Romania, Munsch said.
The annual talks were attended by naval personnel and other representatives from all Black Sea littoral countries except for Russia. U.S. allies like the U.K., Japan and Sweden also were there.
Ukrainian use of drones and missiles reveals problems Western navies could experience in defending against such attacks, said Sebastian Bruns, a German maritime security expert and senior researcher for the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University.
Those challenges include identifying, tracking and neutralizing surface drones that barely rise above surface level. Most Western navies don’t have sufficient close-in weapons systems that can shoot at the angle needed when a surface drone is approaching, he said.
“I am not sure that Western navies would have similar problems as the Russians, but we too would likely lose ships. If not unit kills, then at least mission kills,” said Bruns, who recently published an analysis on Black Sea naval lessons.
Ukrainian use of anti-ship missiles against static targets, such as ships in port and other shore facilities, also is wreaking havoc on the Black Sea Fleet, to include installations, people and their morale, Bruns pointed out.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry on March 24 said it had disabled or destroyed 26 Russian surface vessels and one submarine.
Most recently, Ukrainian forces struck two Russian landing ships, the fleet’s communications center and other facilities in Sevastopol, Crimea, on March 24, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a post to its official X account the same day.
“Anti-ship missiles should be prioritized in (Western) navies,” Bruns said.
The lessons being learned also extend to a Taiwan defense scenario.
Deploying large numbers of cheap drones into a relatively confined battle space such as the Taiwan Strait or the seas near China could make those spaces no-go territory or escalate the costs of operating there to prohibitive levels, said James Holmes, chair of the maritime strategy program at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.
The Pentagon’s Replicator program, announced last year, envisions such a capability, he noted.
“If the Joint Force, along with our allies, can seal off the straits along the first island chain, it will have corralled China’s navy and air force and can strike at them with missiles and drones within their own home waters,” Holmes said. “That’s a wicked problem for Beijing.”
Ukrainian success in the Black Sea also teaches that self-defense can’t be taken for granted, Holmes and Bruns said.
Opponents will try to overwhelm U.S. defenses with many weapons from different points in the hope that enough will get through to score a mission kill and take Navy ships out of action, Holmes said.
“We have done well in the Red Sea to date, but the Houthis could never match the volume of ordnance that a People’s Liberation Army could put out,” he said.
