Maritime Domain Lessons from Russia-Ukraine | Conflict in Focus

This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on February 27, 2025. Watch the full video here.

Captain Quinton Packard: Today we look closely at lessons we can take away from the battle of the Black Sea and discuss how they may inform future conflicts. Welcome to the Maritime Domain Panel of Conflict in Focus: Lessons from Russia-Ukraine.

(Music plays.)

I’m Captain Quinton Packard, the U.S. Navy military fellow at CSIS. And I’m joined by a panel of experts today: Rear Admiral Mike Mattis, director of Strategic Effects at U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, as well as commander of the Combined Task Forces 166 and 66; Dr. Rebecca Grant, vice president of the Lexington Institute, as well as a senior fellow specializing in defense, national security, and aerospace research; and Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the Defense Program at the Center for New American Security and a senior fellow focusing on defense strategy, air power, and war gaming. My thanks to each of you for investing your time with us here today.

So I’d like to start our discussion with a fundamental question and allow each of you an extended opportunity to provide a response. And then we’ll follow that up with some additional questions. Admiral, you’ve traveled the farthest to be with us, from Europe, here today. So I’ll throw the first question to you.

On paper, the Russian Black Sea Fleet was poised to dominate Ukraine’s almost-nonexistent naval forces at the start of the Russian invasion. And yet, in the nearly three years since we’ve seen Ukraine deny sea control to Russia and inflict heavy losses on the Black Sea Fleet, using unmanned sea drones, cruise missiles, and innovative asymmetric warfare. Do Ukraine’s successes in the use of emerging tech demonstrate a sea change for the role of navies? Or are there characteristics about the Black Sea that limit the transferability to other theaters?

Rear Admiral Mike Mattis: Yeah. Thanks for having us, QP. It’s great to be here. And, again, just as an introduction a little bit more, as most people probably haven’t heard of my command, I would like to just provide a little bit additional background. So commander Task Force 166 works for my commander, Admiral Munsch, who’s the theater maritime commander for Naval Forces Europe and Africa, in support of General Cavoli and the AFRICOM commander as well. The task force that he established with 166 is really focused on broader, all-domain effects generation across the theater.

It aligns with my role as his director of strategic effects for Europe and Africa. And then underneath 166, we also have another task force that I also lead, Task Force 66, which works for Vice Admiral Anderson and 6th Fleet, works with the other task force within 6th Fleet to help generate effects. We’re in some ways an unmanned task force, similar to other fleets’ unmanned task forces, but we have more of an integrated all-domain effects approach. And we also have an integration of conventional forces with SOF forces that we look at.

And part of our look at this is how do we look at the hardest problems in theaters, the hard targets, if you will, and then propose asymmetric approaches to get after those hard targets? And what we discovered is the all-domain integration with unmanned systems is one of the best ways to both impose cost at low cost to ourselves as well as get after some of the most difficult challenges that are out there, with lower risk to force and risk to mission. So our task force is really charged with figuring that out. And, again, at 166 I really am focused on, again, capability development, joint combined all-domain integration as necessary, and close coordination across the fleets, in alignment with CNO’s – chief of naval operations – NAVPLAN and Project 33, which get into particularly robotic autonomous systems. So we’ve taken a leadership role in that.

And across all of those things, my specific focus – or, I should say – my primary focus in theater, has been providing support to Ukraine. And so in that regard, I’m sort of the senior military maritime member that is leading security assistance to Ukraine in the maritime. I’ve been in that role for about 18 months at this point, and the key focus there has really been enabling Ukraine to really change the game in the Black Sea and support them with their security assistance needs. So I can’t get into all the things we do, but what I can do is give you a quick overview and then give you some thoughts on where Ukraine is today and how they got there, and then how that relates to future fights. So we can bring the map up, what I’ll do is just do a quick outline of where the conflict has gone over the last, you know, several years.

Captain Packard: Perfect.

RADM Mattis: So, again, interactive map here. Early on it was really about preventing an amphibious landing. And so mines around Odessa. I don’t know if you can see that area. Mines around the Odessa area were critical to establishing an anti-access/area denial capability to prevent Russia from doing an amphibious landing early on. Again, Snake Island, somewhere in this vicinity here, was taken over by the Russians.

And so generating integrated all-domain effects to sort of push the Russians off of that island was a key accomplishment that Ukraine managed to do early in the fight as well. And then given security assistance capabilities with coastal defense cruise missiles, the Harpoon missile which had a range ring of about here, and then with their own Neptune missile homegrown in Ukraine, with a range ring of about here, they were able to create a sea denial zone early in the fight that essentially kept the Russian Navy at bay, further away.

What we saw then is that Russia, realizing that they could neither do an amphibious assault on Ukraine nor that they were going to be able to get in and disrupt the grain corridor directly, we saw sort of a Black Sea Grain Initiative where Russia and Ukraine came to an agreement in 2022 that lasted through July of 2023, where both sides agreed to allow the export of grain for the good of the world. Again, about 25 percent of the world’s grain flows through these ports. And if we saw a closure of these ports, it would lead to a large food crisis across the world.

In July of 2023, what we saw is the Russians did not agree to re-up that deal. And the Russians started to operate sort of outside of the mouth of the Bosphorus here, almost trying to provide a blockade capability on the grain corridor, which, again, goes from the Bosphorus up here to Odessa. So, again, with the posturing of Russian forces here, it looked as though the Ukrainians used unmanned surface vessels to essentially hit several Russian ships in these areas, which, again, pushed Russia even further back from where their coastal defense cruise missiles and mines had already provided. And now they had some even additional buffer. And that, again, sort of opened up the grain corridor to, again, allow the flow of grain.

Again, we didn’t see sinking of Russian ships with unmanned drones until January of 2024, last year. And that was the first time that we really saw – initially in January 31st we saw the sinking of a Raptor, sort of up here in what we call the Wolf’s Nose. So it was up here. And the USV assault was able to sink this Raptor. Then what we saw was the sinking of a Ropucha LST down here. That was about two or three weeks later. And then on – I think it was Valentine’s Day, so it was March 14th – it was over here – actually, I take it back. It was over here in the Kerch Strait. What we saw is the sinking of a Bykov. So within six weeks, we saw the Ukrainian forces managed to sink three Russian ships using USVs, very similar tactics.

So but after March, what we saw was the firing of the Black Sea Fleet commander as well as the chief of the Russian Navy. And as a result of that, we saw Russian forces sort of, you know, let’s just say, shelter in ports. And then what we saw is Ukraine assaulted ports with deep strike missiles, again, hitting, in one case, a submarine and other capabilities, other Ropuchas that were in port. And then what we’ve seen is sort of a retreat to Novorossiysk, and sort of creating a bastion around the Kerch Strait is sort of where we’re at today. And so there have been many attacks out to Novorossiysk the Kerch Strait. What we haven’t seen is the Kerch Bridge fall, but we’ve seen the Kerch Bridge greatly damaged. So we question how much logistics are getting across it, as well as the ferries in the Kerch that have also been damaged.

But the Russian forces are clearly bastioning in Novorossiysk, coming out periodically, and operating in a much more challenged environment where they are no longer questioning any of this Black Sea terrain here, which Ukraine has effectively denied them. Additionally, what we’re seeing is that Russia is operating lots of tac air and rotary wing. And so survivability of USVs trying to get to Novorossiysk or Kerch have gone down by a factor of 10 between January of 2024 and July of 2024. So it’s 10 times harder to get from someplace off the coast of Odessa over to strike Russia because of the air that Russia is able to put up, both rotary wing and tac air.

And that’s where the fight is today. The question is, what will happen next? Again, we’ve seen strikes from Russia into shipping around Odessa, again claiming that the Odessa grain ships had military weapons on them. But what’s really – it was very clear that they were grain ships. It looked as though those grain ships turned off their AIS signals and Russia was no longer able to hit them, so we haven’t seen that tactic anymore as well. The next thing we might expect is Russia has been advertising that they’re building their own USV fleets. And we would expect perhaps an assault on Odessa with those USV capabilities to further erode the grain infrastructure from a surface attack, in addition to the Shahed attacks that are eroding the grain infrastructure as well.

That will sort of bring us up to date through the fight, hopefully provide some context for our discussion moving forward. So apologize for taking so long, but hopefully that provides a good orientation for the team.

Captain Packard: No, that was – that was perfect. Thank you. And just for a point of clarity, USVs, unmanned surface vessels.

RADM Mattis Correct.

Captain Packard: Yeah. And so, you know, you mentioned the grain corridor, which is – which is so important, both to Russia – I’m sorry – to Ukraine, as well as the rest of the world. You know, I just pulled out some facts. In 2021 Ukraine produced 10 percent of the world wheat market, 15 percent of the world corn market, and 13 percent of the barley market. And those exports equated to about 41 percent of their total exports from agricultural products, about $27.8 billion just for 2021. So, again, getting that grain corridor open and getting those the grains flowing, both for world food security as well as for Ukraine’s exports, was really important.

RADM Mattis: Yeah. And keeping – let me – I didn’t really answer your question, so let me just end on this point. You asked, you know, sort of effectively, do we see this as, you know, is there something characteristic about the Black Sea that would limit the transferability of this capability of other theaters? I think what we’re seeing actually, is that a nation with no navy has been able to defy a nation with one of the premier navies in the world. The overall erosion of the Russian Navy in the Black Sea Fleet is they’ve lost 40 percent of their fleet due to USV strikes, deep strike, and other activities that have eroded them.

I think, from a sea denial standpoint, the USV piece, let’s focus on that. That we have seen that sea denial is possible in constrained water spaces. So I don’t think this works in the Philippine Sea, for example. One million square miles, no land. Probably not the tactic to use there. But for the Black Sea, for the Baltic, for the Celebes or Sulu Sea, and INDOPACOM, the Taiwan Strait for example, those would all be ripe areas for sea denial capabilities to be used. Have to have the range and the ability to generate the mass that’s needed.

And, again, we assess that sort of those early strikes against the Russian shipping – I’m sorry, the Russian warships that were trying to prevent shipping through the grain corridor were not successful in sinking ships because they didn’t bring the mass they needed. We thought that they then evolved between that January and March period, where they were bringing mass to the fight, and that was making a difference. And, again, the Russians counteracted with bringing tac air that was eroding the mass and making their effects less useful.

So it’s an evolving fight, changing character of war with the drones. But this is not going to be a static fight moving forward. So again, this isn’t something that Ukraine has locked in and it’s going to be permanently good. It is something that if you’re able to stay ahead where the evolution of the fight in the maritime goes, these sea spaces are ripe for sea denial capability.

Captain Packard: Outstanding. You got right to the fundamental answer that we’re looking to explore a little bit more.

Dr. Pettyjohn.

Stacie Pettyjohn: Thanks for having me here. And that was a wonderful setup, and a hard act to follow.

My research has been focusing on drones more generally. I had a report out a year and a half ago, Evolution Not Revolution, looking at drones in Ukraine. And it’s really interesting when you look at the maritime drones that the Ukrainians have used in the context of the overall war. They are one of what I would call a part of the deep attacks, or the strategic strikes that the Ukrainians have been able to undertake, that they otherwise wouldn’t have any capability to do so.

And it has been astonishing to me, in fact, how much they’ve grown this capability and how it’s evolved over time, as the admiral pointed out, and how effective it has been in terms of keeping the Black Sea open for Ukrainian exports, and just keeping the Russian fleet back, which, you know, doesn’t negate their ability to launch long-range missiles into Ukraine, but pushes them farther away and makes them use more expensive systems rather than cheaper, different types of weapons.

So when you look at – just to add a little bit from what I heard when I was in Ukraine in October, about where the fight is evolving right now on the Black Sea, you know, the Ukrainians have really been stymied by Russian air and, in particular, helicopters. They’ve been able to see the kamikaze drone swarms as they come out and interdict them. And they’ve responded by developing more diversified sort of groupings. They’re not real swarms in terms of autonomously collaborating, because all of these boats are remotely controlled, but creating different drone boats that are somewhat modular in terms of the actual craft, and then different capabilities on the top.

So they have put some air-to-air missiles on one. So they essentially have a little (sand ?) boat that can come out and has supposedly taken down at least one helicopter, if not more. And they have done so, intentionally baiting the Russians by sending out the kamikazes and then, you know, sort of ambush them with this air defense capability. They’re also building ones that have sort of groups of small quadcopters on them so that they can deploy those air capabilities.

I would presume some of those might be the first-person view kamikaze drones delivering munitions to launch small attacks. And then also ones with cannons. So they’re assuming that they might actually have to face a surface threat, and then being able to fire directly back at them. And their tactics are evolving, though I’m sure the Russians will respond, and there will be another evolution in what we see going forward.

My other report, Swarms over the Strait, was sort of trying to identify what lessons from Ukraine were applicable to the Indo-Pacific, and in particular a U.S.-China war over Taiwan. And I think that the admiral is absolutely correct that uncrewed vessels are a wonderful sea denial capability, especially in constrained waters and in close ranges. And what we haven’t seen yet, and where I think their capability will dilute because you just can’t mass as many forces, is over longer distances, and when there’s greater uncertainty as to where you might be operating and wanting to go out and find an enemy fleet.

If you have to search that area, you would obviously be relying on other types of sensors, whether those are in space or in the air, to help to cue you to find them because it’s just a bigger operating environment and will be hard to otherwise find them. So I don’t – I know that INDOPACOM has supposedly had some uncrewed surface vessels that have been deployed there. And I think that makes sense. I think there are some interesting ways, in terms of helping to keep certain straits open in the Pacific.

You know, if you’re looking in the southern Ryukyus or some of the northern Philippines, and some of the areas where the U.S. might want to be cycling it’s under – its Virginia-class submarines in and out in a major conflict, and keep that open, and also bottle up the PLA Navy, that they would be really helpful. But, as – I think in general that uncrewed vehicles – the ones that we’ve seen right now lack the range and endurance to provide the U.S. the type of capabilities at the same costs that the Ukrainians have.

And that’s not to say that we shouldn’t be using them or experimenting with them, or that they couldn’t play important roles. Where I do think that they are potentially hugely helpful is for a country like Taiwan, or even Japan, the Philippines, if they’re looking at extending their porcupine defenses – you know, mines, antiship cruise missiles. There’s been research for decades now arguing that if Taiwan had layers of antiship cruise missiles of various lengths, even without additional queuing, that they make it really, really difficult to launch an amphibious assault on the island.

And I think that is certainly true if you were to add in aerial drones for queuing, but also USVs as a part of that layered sort of attack approach. Because in that specific scenario, Taiwan is defending itself. It doesn’t need to go that far. There are limited areas where an invasion force could actually land. And all of that sort of placed their favor.

Do I think this, you know, portends a revolution right now more broadly in terms of sea denial capabilities? I think this is another step that we’ve seen in terms of the increasing lethality of the maritime environment on the surface. And it goes back to 1967 at least, when the Egyptians sank an Israeli ship with an antiship cruise missile. And you’ve had increasing concerns about that capability. Then China began developing antiship ballistic missiles with extremely long ranges. You know, I guess they’re retiring the DF-21, the antiship variant now, and focusing exclusively on the DF-26.

So I think that there is – you’re seeing that contested zone being extended, but it’s not just the fires capabilities. It’s them being able to actually execute and close the entire kill chain, which involves finding a moving target over a wide area and keeping that track during the course of which an effector would actually need to reach it. So one area where the USVs probably have somewhat of a disadvantage compared to an antiship ballistic missile is they’re slower, right? They can carry a big payload, not relative to a ballistic missile but relative to an aerial drone. But they don’t have sort of the speed-to-target to close. So you have to maintain that targeting track for a longer period of time.

And I think it’s right, Mike Kofman’s a friend, and he wrote this piece a while ago on War on the Rocks arguing about angry red bubbles and A2/AD. And it’s not like it’s a total keep out zone. I think you can go in. It just means you have to be very deliberate, and have additional defenses in place, and know that you’re likely to be contested, and that there will be losses to pushing and projecting power into those areas instead of just sort of the really permissive environment that we’ve seen over the last 20 or 30 years.

Captain Packard: Right. So, from what I – from what I understand, that the drone technology and the incorporation of that technology and those tactics at this point still evolutionary, not revolutionary, right? We’re not talking third offset potential quite yet, right?

Dr. Pettyjohn: That’s what I’ve argued. And I do so just because when you look at how you define a revolution in military affairs, and I think other people probably have other opinions, it’s supposed to provide a decisive advantage to one – the side that has it. And you haven’t seen that in Ukraine. The sea is the one area where the Russians haven’t emulated the Ukrainians yet with respect to drone technology, but it still hasn’t sort of turned the fight, in a way. The other things are – I think the real piece is sort of how you integrate it with other operations.

And this is one of the things that I think the U.S. as a joint force is facing right now, where they’re looking at how you incorporate cheap and autonomous systems, and don’t just use them the way our adversaries have, who don’t have other capabilities, oftentimes – like the Houthis. We need to figure out how we employ them with our really advanced capabilities in the best sort of sequence and way to achieve specific missions.

And that’s where I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and testing and experimentation that needs to happen, and where there could potentially be a revolutionary change, especially as uncrewed systems become more autonomous, and if you reach the point that we actually are deploying fully autonomous systems, and they collaborate.

Captain Packard: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so the hybrid aspect of the war, where you have multiple layered effects that kind of – that merge together to create the overall strategy, that – I totally agree.

And now, Dr. Grant. So you released an interview with The National Interest just last month looking at the Orca, and how that unmanned undersea vehicle, UUV, was being used by the U.S. Navy. So perhaps you can give some thoughts to not just the Black Sea and the transferability, but also if you would share some of your thoughts on – from that article as well.

Rebecca Grant: Right, and I’m glad you brought up Orca, the extra-large UUV. It’s about the size of a Mack Truck. And it has a module that snaps onto it. It’s just in development. I think that the Navy has two orcas right now working out in the Ventura County Test Range experimenting and seeing how they’re doing. But I think there’s great – a really great connection between Orca and other unmanned programs and the fantastic discussion we’ve heard here today. It’s clear that the battle in the Black Sea has enormous implications for our tactics, for our procurement, and for our allies. But that there is a question. And that is, how does innovative sea denial work with an air denial environment? So let me just touch on each of those four areas.

You know, the tactical back and forth, it reminds me in a way of reading through Samuel Eliot Morison in World War II. So many immediate changes and so many just enticing prospects of using modern mine warfare for area and sea denial, while we want to be able to pick up these tactics of bottling up and getting a fleet back in port. These are some tremendous achievements. And I think that they’ve got immediate relevance, as you’ve both pointed out, to various areas of the Pacific, perhaps to the Red Sea as well, certainly in the Baltic.

And this is now going to become part of, I think, the standard understanding of naval tactics. And I hope that those of us in the policy realm begin to understand a bit more about how important these lessons are and how they expand the options for the very important gray zone conflict that we’re trying to prepare for, trying to get good options for, but still, I think, really struggling with the direction for that. So enormous changes in tactics. And I thank you for telling us about some of them. We all really need to keep those in mind.

I think in procurement there are some immediate lessons. So much discussion in Washington D.C. today about the status of shipbuilding, questions about the role of aircraft carriers, questions that we haven’t seen about the fundamental size of our Navy fleet. And so we are going to be talking about how uncrewed systems make a contribution. I want to just go a layer down and say that what we see is that we need to emphasize some key principles here. And that’s going to be, as you pointed out, modularity, scalability. We want to make sure that anything we’re doing, it uses the most of the most open system architecture approach. You know, we just can’t go back into an old way of doing business. And I think the expert tactical lessons are really going to point us in that direction.

Third, just very quickly. This has enormous implications for our allies, who we want to have participate with us. And in a partnership like AUKUS, in tier two we have a prospect of doing much more innovative research. It’s not just about the submarine piece, but there’s quite a bit more. And I think that the lessons coming out of the Black Sea point towards things where we can cooperate with allies who have specific needs, specific requirements, and bring capabilities to the table. So to me, what – the tremendous things that Ukraine has done against Russia, which is fantastic, really tells us that we need to go and develop that with a lot of our NATO partners and with our Pacific partners as well.

You know, that said, the big question – you’ve both raised it. Admiral, you did it at the end of your presentation, and you did as well. What happens when you put big air power over this region? One issue about the Black Sea and the Ukraine war in general is it is regarded as an air power stalemate. And so while Russia has been – continues to be aggressive in using its tactical air power and its rotary wing in operations over land and over sea as well, you know, we really don’t know how a topline Air Force, like the U.S. Air Force and the Navy and Marine Corps, when you put that larger air superiority piece over this unmanned surface battle, what do you get?

You know, I think one thing it does remind us – and I think the Air Force has taken this on board, so has the Navy – is that the future of air power is targeting a lot of surface vessels, right? And we’ve seen that, and that understanding. But, again, for the policymakers, we need to understand that we need to have that capability to use all of our air power, manned and unmanned and working together, to hold surface vessels at risk. The specifics of how drone operations look when you’ve got an F-22 and an F-35 or a J-20 in the area, I think that’s just a really big question. And I hope that we start to take some of the lessons from what Russia is trying to do to apply both to how we want to defend against that and then how we want to operate against potential Chinese unmanned vehicles.

But I think the bottom line here is it’s a really good moment. You know, we are seeing the Navy, I think, just full steam ahead. You know, Admiral Franchetti seems to be absolutely going full steam ahead on the unmanned surface vessels. You know, Orca is the biggest one, of course. There are many, many others that do things. But, you know, a great thing about Orca is, you know, part of that mission could be to do, you know, mine laying – in the modern version, where it’s all very different. It’s not dropping big balls over the side, right? It’s, you know, you put a capability there, and, you know, the bad guy goes by and that’s it. So Orca has a potential to be used to swap in and out for some of the submarine fleet, and then to do probably a whole bunch of other things that we haven’t even thought of yet, or you probably know about and can’t talk about.

So we want to continue that integration, for sure. I like what we’re seeing from the Black Sea because it covers what’s, I think, next is most important for us, which is additional experimentation and seeing how all these things work together. No question this is the way forward. I think MQ-25 Stingray goes – is being delivered to the Navy this fiscal year. And we hope to see it out in an air wing doing some of its good ISR work. But things have changed. What we will have to do is balance how our drone systems, if they’re able to carry out their missions – be that strike, sea denial, or ISR – in a condition where we have highly contested air forces going at each other and going at those drones below.

Captain Packard: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, each of you. You know, one other additional point, for the Black Sea, is there’s an artificiality in its constrained waters, and also the politics of the Bosphorus. I mean, Turkey has sealed off any additional warships from Russia coming in to be able to backfill some of the losses that they’ve had. So, you know, there’s the old adage that, for a surface conflict, whoever can overcome the losses is the – is the side that’s going to win. And right now, because of that artificiality, Russia isn’t able to re-backfill their losses. Thank you.

So next question. And there’s so much to get into. This is so meaty. Admiral Mattis, you started to talk a little bit about Ukraine’s objectives, as well as Russia’s. Can you give a little more detail, a little more depth from the outset of where they started at the beginning of the invasion, and then how their maritime objectives have evolved in the Black Sea?

RADM Mattis: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll echo, actually, my Ukrainian Navy partners’ narrative on this. They tell a good story. I mean, they really had four objectives. Objective number one was prevent invasion from sea. We talked about that. Mine warfare and essentially the coastal defense cruise missiles were the key denial capability early on to enable that. So, so far, achieved. No amphibious invasion has occurred. And Russia was postured. They had moved – because of their clear knowledge of the, you know, Bosphorus accords and the various limitations that would happen when war broke out, it was clear, in retrospect, that Russia had postured an amphibious fleet, if you will, in the Black Sea ahead of declaration of war. And they were clearly looking at an amphibious invasion. So, you know, Ukraine, you know, check. Completed successfully.

The second one really is, prevent missile attacks from the sea. So, so far, the ability of Russia to launch their Kalibr cruise missiles from the sea has been significantly diminished, but they still retain that capability. What would happen early in the conflict is we would have Russian surface ships and submarines on combat deployments for longer periods of time, launching their missiles at will. What we’re seeing now is that those ships will come out briefly, launch their missiles, and get back into port. They are simply too risky to stay out, you know, in the Black Sea and do that. But they still have some ability to deliver cruise missiles from the sea. And, again, from further seas as well. We’ve seen cruise missile launches from the Caspian as well. So, again, those missiles have a fairly long range.

The third, you know, objective that Ukraine had, that we talked about, was to prevent blockade. And, again, early on, the grain initiative, sort of an agreement, you know, between both parties to keep the food flow going. But when that fell apart, what we saw was the innovation of Ukraine to be able to attack Russian warships at the mouth of the Bosporus, or coming out of the Bosporus, the commercial shipping going up to Odessa was really pushed back.

They were unable to maintain operations to sort of maintain that blockade line because of unmanned surface vessels. Again, the tactics hadn’t evolved. They didn’t have the mass, so they didn’t get any sinkings. But, again, blockade has been prevented. And, in fact, to your point with the amount of grain going through the Black Sea at this point, Ukraine is actually exporting more grain today than they did at the beginning of the war. So, again, big check-plus on Ukraine being able to achieve that objective.

The last objective really was to prevent resupply ashore, particularly in Crimea, but also to cause impacts down in Syria. And, again, this was long before Syria even had a hint of falling, really. But what we referred to as the Syrian express, with ships going from previously Sevastopol and now Novorossiysk to Tartus – I should say, formerly going to Tartus. Again, there was cost imposition there.

And so when you looked at the Syrian express shipments that would go from the Black Sea to Tartus, those slowed down dramatically. So in 2022, no issues, no impact, routine transits. 2023, dramatic decrease in those transits. And, again, in 2024 we saw, again, even more impact there, to the point where they stopped wholly and that supply for Tartus was coming from the Baltic. So, again, what we’d see there is that’s an imposition of rather than a five-to-seven-day transit I’m now looking at a 12-to-14-day transit. That is a significant impact.

And we don’t really talk about it as a main objective, but a secondary effect of the sea denial and the defensive posture that Russia has had to maintain in the Black Sea has really been a readiness erosion, to a large degree, of their surface fleet and of their air fleet. Imagine having to put up, you know, 20 to 30 helicopters and tac aircraft every time they suspect an unmanned surface vessel is in the Black Sea. That comes at a cost. And so, to some degree, the cost imposition on readiness that Ukraine has generated has been significant.

Russia’s objectives. Number one, the heart of this fight has been: Protect Crimea. I would say they have been unsuccessful in fully protecting Crimea. They are holding onto it, but they have had to retreat from the major port in the Black Sea. The whole reason that Russia wanted Crimea was for Sevastopol. That was the port of importance. There are no naval operations happening out of Sevastopol of any significance today, due to unmanned surface attacks and deep strike attacks that Ukraine has conducted against Sevastopol.

So I would say, limited success by Russia in maintaining Crimea and maintaining supply to Crimea. So again, Kerch Bridge, still standing but significantly eroded in its capacity for anything to go over either the road or the rail along those lines. And the ferries and the ferry ports have also been struck by the Ukraine deep strike capabilities, with unmanned surface vessels and munitions provided by the coalition. So, again, Russia’s ability to sustain Crimea is not coming from the Kerch Strait and the Bridge. It’s coming from, essentially, the other land bridges that Russia has directly, you know, coming down on the eastern side of Ukraine that they maintained.

Again, so from a maritime perspective I would say Ukraine is really winning that fight. But the reality is, Russia has not been forced to evacuate Crimea. So, really a win for Russia there because, again, Crimea is at the heart of this fight. And when you think about post war what Russia is looking to hang on to – so, again, we’ll see if there’s a settlement here what it looks like.

But if Crimea were to remain in Russia’s hands, the threat with the Russian economic exclusion zone increase that could happen if they maintain control of Crimea, I think, is a fundamental existential threat to the other Black Sea nations, especially with Russia’s well-documented open-source reporting on their undersea activities against critical undersea infrastructure. So I think that is particularly troubling, particularly with Romania and some of the things they’re trying to do with their Neptun Deep gas exploration in the Black Sea. So very problematic there. So in many ways, a big win for Russia if they’re able to hold onto Crimea.

With respect to Russia, I think at this point they’ve conceded their objectives, at this point, in the Black Sea, of trying to, again, almost the opposite of what Ukraine’s were. Invasion from sea, no go. So failed at that objective. Missile attacks at sea. Half, maybe. They’re still doing some things. They’ve been – their blockade, ineffective. So they’ve effectively failed in most of their objectives there. And then, again, as we’ve talked about the resupply ashore, they’re really winning that but not because of the maritime impact there but really because they maintain land control.

So that’s how I see the fight going. But, frankly, just holding onto Crimea, even if they’ve ceded all of their other objectives in the Black Sea and have ceded the sort of status quo that they have in the Black Sea, that’s really actually a pretty big win for Russia, if they can hold onto it long term.

Captain Packard: Yeah. Thank you very much for that. And we’ve talked a lot so far – we’ve referenced a lot of successful engagements by these USVs on Russian ships. We have a few video clips that we’ve kind of curated, just that we can – we can show the audience to give them some idea.

The first one being from March of 2024, with the successful engagement of the Sergey Kotov. If you’d roll that clip, please. So this one – reports are that this Russian missile corvette, was engaged by two separate packs of USVs. One which approached from the port side and another from the stern side. And they kind of herded the ship into deeper waters, where it was successfully sunk by a third pack of – or, swarm of USVs. And, again, that USV is known as the Sea Baby, which is one of the coolest names of all undersea vehicles – or, surface vehicles.

The second one is from January of ’24. And this is the missile corvette Ivanovets. Both of these come courtesy of the Ukrainian Department of Defense social media page. So thank you for that. And you can see through successive camera perspectives scoring repeated hits on the – on the Ivanovets. And in the final seconds of this clip, you can see Russian small arms impacts as the sailors are trying to engage and interdict that drone. There you go.

And then in the final clip, this is from August of ’23. This is the landing ship, Olenegorsky Gornyak. This one’s interesting because this is a very long, slow approach. You don’t see a lot of maneuvering by the USV. And you also – there’s an absence of any visible Russian defense. You see, it’s obviously not making that much speed. There’s not significant bow waves. But it just does a slow, steady track onto the ship.

So, Dr. Pettyjohn, you traveled just last fall to Ukraine, and got to see some of these drones firsthand. Are these victories, like some of the ones we just showed, are they indicative of the overwhelming efficacy of the technology and the tactics? Or is this more indicative of Russian poor defensive posture?

Dr. Pettyjohn: It’s a hard thing to pinpoint, but I think it’s a bit of a mixed bag. And clearly the Russians did not, you know, always employ the best defensive tactics and respond with alacrity, change their sort of operating procedures after the first attack, and be more on alert and ready to interdict incoming swarms. But they have, over time. After the change in leadership seemed to be a shift. And part of it wasn’t just withdrawing the ships farther back, but also using air power to support them as an effective counter against the USVs.

So I think that there is a – there is something to small swarming boat tactics. That’s been something the U.S. Navy’s been concerned about for a long time in the Persian Gulf, thinking about Iranians. I think Millennium Challenge, that was one of – the notorious war game, one of the tactics that Van Riper used, supposedly effectively, that got erased. But there are ways to actually defeat that. And the Russians just weren’t particularly capable of doing so. Which is not totally surprising. They haven’t been necessarily a force across the board jointly that has responded until they have been told to from their leadership. They’ve just taken punches and then – and then there have been changes after the fact much more slowly. But they’ve been willing to absorb the losses that they’ve taken in most of these areas, and keep going.

Captain Packard: Yeah. Yeah. Very, very good points. And, Dr. Grant, can you talk a little bit about what specific vulnerabilities the Russian Black Sea Fleet – of the fleet that Ukraine has exploited in these successful attacks? And how sustainable do you think these vulnerabilities are in the long term?

Dr. Grant: Well, I think surprise has been an incredible exploitation by Ukraine. And, frankly, I look at this and I want the U.S. Navy to have even more sophisticated capability in this realm. You know, we know that China’s Navy, by hull numbers, is larger than ours. Then there are their so-called fishing vessels and Coast Guard vessels. I’d like those Chinese captains to be concerned about something like this happening to them if they’re trying to mess around with water cannons against the Filipinos, or in various places. You know, so we want that ability.

On vulnerability, I think what we have seen with Russia was, we got to admit, that they have learned. And particularly in the electronic warfare space we see incredible rapid back and forth and changes in software and in tactics. I think there’s a possibility of that happening. I think I’m probably more concerned, in a way, about perhaps other adversaries going to school on Russia’s successes and failures and saying, hmm, we’re going to need to take this into account. So equally I want our U.S. destroyers that are out there, specifically in their ballistic missile defense role, you know, with their SM-3s, I don’t want them to have to be worried about these – about adversary swarms harassing them and getting in the way of carrying out their important mission, especially when they’re off in an area where they need to be in a specific place. And, you know, harassment would be very, very tough on readiness.

So, you know, I think that it’s great to see Ukraine continue to exploit the vulnerabilities that Russia has. Russia remains vulnerable. You know, they’ve really – the basically – the functional loss of Sevastopol, I think, has incredible geostrategic implications, and perhaps may even be helpful in the settlement of this war at some point in the future. And that is a tremendous credit to Ukraine’s Navy, to the assistance from their allies, like yourself. And, you know, Russia has just got to be aware that they do not hold a winning hand in the Black Sea. They’ve lost. And they can innovate a little bit here and there, mess around with their tac air and helicopters, but they’ve lost this fight.

Captain Packard: Yeah. And I would just add that the fact that we haven’t seen Russia reassert itself in the Black Sea in any meaningful way – again, we saw brief moments of cruise missile strikes against grain ships in Odessa. We see the continual reigning of Shahed, you know, the Iranian UASes, to try and erode that grain infrastructure. And in spite of that, Ukraine has come back. But, again, why hasn’t Russia? They have publicly demonstrated and shown that they’re working on their own USVs? And, you know, why would they have not asserted that capability?

And I think, honestly, it has been a matter of not just surprise, but they’re essentially still on their back foot. But because this is a back and forth, and the enemy gets a vote, and it goes both ways, the question is what can Ukraine do in the near term to keep Russia on its back foot? And so I think that’s where this gets very interesting now, especially as maybe the nature of this conflict is going to evolve. The reality is, while we – while Ukraine has been able to generate strategic effects in the Black Sea, they have failed to do so largely in the land domain. And in fact, recently they have experienced some losses of territory in the eastern Ukraine.

And so that the real question then is, how can they keep Russia from reasserting itself in the Black Sea, in a way? Again, because this is a tug of war. And you do – you have a temporary advantage, and then the fight evolves. And so it is about iteration. And it is about surprise. And how did those things go together? And so I’d offer that the only way that one generates that – there is no perfect platform here. There is no perfect tactic. It is really this combination and variation of tactics, capabilities, and integrated effects to continue to derive the opponent onto their back foot and force them to adjust to you, rather than you having adjust to them. And so, again, it’s sort of that almost martial arts-like thing of how can you keep them on the defensive. And that’s, I think, much harder.

But really, I think to your point about being able to defend against these capabilities, I think this is a warning shot to conventional navies. That we must take seriously our ability to counter USVs and other integrated effects – USVs and UASes – against our forces. And so, again, my task force is – has been challenged with how we can work with NATO on those tasks. And we are actively engaging with our NATO partners in Europe, and our African partners – not just on the maritime domain awareness, to know what’s coming and to have visibility and insight from robotic autonomous systems, but also be able to actively defeat those incoming capabilities and defend our assets so that ships on a ballistic missile defense posture, for example, don’t need to worry about those things disturbing their other primary mission set.

So, again, I think there’s lots of lessons here that we need to take seriously. And we have a lot of work to do. But, again, this just goes to show what we see really – what we call the Black Sea battle lab, what’s happening there where you can learn and see with a thinking adversary, a real electromagnetic spectrum challenge that is going on there. I don’t think most people really appreciate that that is the most acrid environment for electromagnetic signals in the world right now. Maybe the Eastern Med is the second closest. But both are really, really bad. And then how are adversaries responding to the attacks? And how are our partners able to continue to generate effects, in spite of the adversary?

And so all of those are a mixture that we’re never going to get to through just experiments. And so that is why this battle lab is so important for us to study and learn. The task that I have is sort of the single accountable officer in the U.S. Navy that is looking at Ukraine, and trying to transition those lessons to INDOPACOM and the future fight so that we can get after that. But I’d also argue that we have a call from our chief of naval operations, and certainly from Admiral Munsch, my boss, and certainly from NATO, to figure out how we are going to accelerate our own capabilities in these areas.

And so it gets beyond experimentation. I would argue we are beyond experimentation with robotic autonomous systems. We are now in a period of operationalization and rehearsal. And so our ability to create A2/AD bubbles and defeat A2/AD bubbles with robotic autonomous systems is an essential capability that we must develop. And, again, those are clear lessons out of the Black Sea. And we must move with alacrity and a sense of urgency that we haven’t seen. This – to the – to your question about the changing character of war and is this evolution or revolution, I would say this is early in the revolution, which is still evolutionary. It has the potential to be revolutionary if we can integrate these effects with other effects.

That is why my task force is an all-domain task force, is because robotic autonomous systems alone are insufficient to generate these. But as we’ve seen with what Ukraine has done, with deep strike, with space and cyber effects, with the ability to integrate undersea, surface, air effects with missiles and other things, you can generate significant effects in a meaningful way at much lower cost. And that’s the key here, much lower cost and much lower risk to mission and risk to force. And so those are all the advantages, but the complexity remains.

And so, again, we are beyond experimentation, because experimentation is about what I consider validating capabilities and limitations of specific platforms. Operationalization and rehearsal is about execution of kill chains. And that is where we’ve got to start working rapidly to be able to both execute our own kill chains and defeat adversary kill chains with these systems.

Dr. Pettyjohn: Absolutely. I think this is very much a tactic that can be emulated by actors of all types. I think this is one of the things that Ukraine has dispelled the notion that, you know, cheap drones are only for use by nonstate actors or terrorists. You know, ISIS was the first one to innovate and begin using quadcopters to launch attacks on U.S. forces and their Iraqi partners during the battle for Mosul. But we’ve seen that if you are a professional military or army on the ground, you still need quadcopters for your situational awareness and to be able to conduct modern operations if your adversary has them. So – or, effective operations.

I think that on the sea you’re going to see more and more actors that –d maybe they’re gray zone type tactics, where you have – like China’s maritime militia, or you have nonstate actors, like Hezbollah, the Houthis, who are using this to harass shipping, to harass opponents’ forces, to try to essentially exert their control or at least push out and deny different bodies of water to different actors. But I think that it is also important to realize the limitations of this approach. It would be an extension of the cost-imposing strategy that you’re seeing right now in the air with the Houthis, with the cheap drones and the cheap missiles.

Where, you know, they haven’t sunk ships, thankfully, or hit even that many, but they are on the winning side of the cost exchange ratio, and they’re making it extremely expensive where, you know, the U.S. Navy has to – and the U.S. Air Force together – are spending a lot of time and energy and expending their readiness firing whether it’s air to air missiles or SM-2s or SM-3s. I mean, the Navy just released the numbers of air defense weapons they fired. And it's something like 400. And a good number of SM-6s, which we can’t get produced fast enough. Any of these systems. So we need to find more cost-effective ways of countering these irregular and asymmetric tactics, as well as harnessing them and incorporating them into our own operations.

Captain Packard: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. So far, we’ve talked about surface and aerial drones and some cruise missiles. In 2023, Ukraine announced the procurement of an undersea drone – actually several, one being the Marichka. Despite its advertised range of 600 miles, we haven’t heard of any successful engagements with that system yet. Admiral, as a career submariner – or – yeah, submariner – what role do you see for Ukraine in the underwater drone space?

RADM Mattis: Yeah. What we’ve seen them announce is that they are working on that capability. Clearly, that range is insufficient to hit the critical infrastructure in Novorossiysk or the Kerch Bridge, which is – which is what would be their key objective. But at the same time, the key advantage of an undersea drone in delivering these effects is survivability, right? It gets rid of this air problem that the Russians have been so effective in putting up with rotary wing and tac air providing combat air patrol over the Black Sea. So it also goes to the surprise. The ability to generate surprise is critical as well.

So it really comes back to operational reach and the payload. And then, again, the undersea vehicles require some additional autonomy. Black Sea currents are not intuitive or easy, and Black Sea salinity for buoyancy is another challenge that they have as well. So Black Sea is a very unique body of water and very challenging to sort of get through. And so generally unmanned undersea vehicles require a navigation mode where they’re locked to the surface or they’re locked to the bottom. The Black Sea has a very strange undersea – not strange, but sort of – it’s a deep center, and it’s very shallow around the rim, and it’s got this counterclockwise current in it, which all create their own unique challenges from really effectively utilizing these drones to, using autonomy, get to a target stealthily and then being able to deliver a payload on target.

So it is possible that those drones were used in Kerch Bridge attacks, and that’s part of the sort of destabilization of the Kerch Bridge. I just don’t think we know. Clearly Ukraine is claiming they have the capability. And they’re clearly evolving it. And clearly they’ve been very successful at evolution of these technologies. So if we haven’t seen it yet, I think we’re probably going to see it in the near future.

Captain Packard: Interesting. Thank you.

All right, so we’re just about to wrap it up. I have one closing question. And, Dr. Grant, I’d love to hear from you first. What are the two things that you want us to take away, and two things we should not take away, from the battle of the Black Sea so far?

Dr. Grant: Two things to take away. One, we need to accelerate our tactics with unmanned vessels. But I think the second thing is, they work best in the context of a robust Navy that has the air power and the submarines, and all that going together. That’s where we’re going to be most effective. What not to take away. Let’s not take air superiority off the table, as we have done. When we talk about the Kerch Bridge, I’m always reminded of the B-2 bomber elegantly dropping the Novi Sad Bridge in 1999 with just a few munitions. So let’s not take that off the table. And secondly, you know, let’s not give away our element of surprise. We see how effective it is.

Captain Packard:

 Thank you. Dr. Pettyjohn.

Dr. Pettyjohn: I’d actually echo what Rebecca said. I think that we should take away the fact that we need cost effective counters to USVs. This is a real threat that could proliferate very quickly, and we need to be able to defend against it. I don’t think we should – and while I agree that we should accelerate acquisition and operationalize these capabilities, we shouldn’t take away that they’re substitutes for our existing platforms.

You’re seeing this across the board with air forces, and whether it’s artillery, does FPV replace that? Drones are providing new capabilities we didn’t have, in ways, and sometimes providing actors with a capability that they otherwise would not be able to have. But they aren’t exact substitutes. And they don’t have the same capability, payload, and range as our existing platforms. And where we really need to figure out how we maintain our edge on the high-end systems and integrate these cheaper, uncrewed systems, and to greater effect than either alone.

Captain Packard:

 Right. Yeah. We need good enough drones, and we need them at scale.

Dr. Pettyjohn Exactly.

Captain Packard:

 Yeah. Fantastic. And, sir, close us out please.

RADM Mattis: Absolutely. So, first off I would say, for a takeaway, there’s a difference between drones employment in the land domain and the maritime domain. In the land domain, because of defensive capabilities – barbed wire, trenches, mines, et cetera – it’s very hard to create strategic effects with drones. What we instead see is sort of like a World War I drone hellscape, more than anything else. It’s possible if you’re able to get behind those defensive lines. We saw that in Kursk, for example. But well defended lines with drones, it’s sort of a stalemate – World War I-ish.

In the maritime, very different. What we’ve seen Ukraine do has been on the verge of revolutionary. It was – especially with the rapidity that they’ve been able to generate these effects. And so I think it goes to Wayne Hughes and fleet tactics, that there is no sort of defensive in the maritime. There is no – you know, even with mines and other things, ships afloat can be struck. So, again, you can generate strategic effects in the maritime. That’s critical.

And then the second thing I would say to take away is that this is very much an action, reaction, counter-action fight. There is no static nature to this fight. Something’s going to happen, the adversary is going to respond, you have to respond to what the adversary is going to respond to. And that means that staying ahead of this fight, so not creating a point solution sort of that lags the problem but actually creating a solution that’s going to lead the problem and stay ahead of it, is going to be driven by innovation and adaptation. And so our ability to do that is going to be essential to really doing that.

Things that we shouldn’t take away from this fight. Unmanned systems are not the solution to everything. They are a piece of the puzzle and they are capable, in the right ocean space, of creating a sea denial effect. And the other thing I would – I would take away is that – is that integrated, all-domain effects are how you’re going to win the next fight. Again, this is not a single-domain fight. This is an all-domain fight. And so the ability of either side, as Ukraine was able to do with Snake Island and as they’ve been able to do in generating effects against Crimea and some of these other ports in the Black Sea, when they are most effective is when they have an all-domain assault going on that is overwhelming the adversary’s ability to defend. And so, again, I think that drones alone, insufficient.

Captain Packard: Fantastic. That was a great way to close us out. Thank you. So this concludes our discussion today. I’d like to thank each of you, again, for taking the time to be with us.

This has been the Maritime Domain Panel of the Conflict in Focus: Lessons from Russia-Ukraine Series. We will be exploring lessons learned from several other domains in the coming weeks. And you can find them on YouTube or CSIS.org. Thank you for joining us today.

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