The Ukrainian navy has led for the first time in history a team within a NATO exercise. And he did it with a result that within the Alliance: the group he led, acting as an “enemy” force, managed to “sink” an allied frigate during a simulation before their drones.
The army has left a conclusion already known: cheap and fast naval drones can pose a real threat for traditional fleets if they are not detected in time.
A naval exercise that exposed weaknesses
Dozens of naval units, aircraft and unmanned systems participated in the confrontation. The objective was recreate realistic naval combat scenariossuch as port protection, convoy escorts or attacks against enemy fleets.
The teams were divided into two sides:
- “Blues”: NATO forces.
- “Reds”: the team that acted as the enemy and was coordinated by Ukrainewith the participation of American, British, Spanish and other countries units.
In the five simulated scenarios, the “red” team managed to prevail. One of the most striking episodes occurred during a simulated attack on a convoy. Ukrainian-led team’s maritime drones hit frigate so many times that, in a real combat, the ship would have been sunk.
According to the Ukrainian source cited by FAZ, the most worrying thing was the lack of detection: “The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t stop us. They hadn’t even seen our weapons”.
The simulation used a simple rule: if a drone achieved targeting a critical ship system—for example, radar—before being detectedthe attack was considered to have been successful in actual combat.
In the case of the frigate, the drones managed to mark their targets before the crew could locate them.
Magura V7 drones, key to the exercise
Ukraine brought to the exercise one of the systems that it has used most in the Black Sea war: the naval drones Magura V7 (MV7).
These are small, high-speed unmanned boats that can be used for different missions:
- Recognition and surveillance.
- Attacks with explosive charge.
- Use of machine guns or light weapons.
- Attacks against enemy radars or sensors.
These vessels are remotely controlled and can approach the target at high speed, making their detection difficult.
Since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine has turned these drones into one of its main naval weaponsespecially since its conventional fleet is very limited.
One of the best known cases was the sinking of the russian cruise Moscowflagship of the Black Sea Fleet, in April 2022. Since then, Russia had to move its main base from Sevastopol (Crimea) to Novorossiysk.
Even in that port, Ukraine managed attack a Russian submarine with an underwater drone in December 2024according to information disseminated by international media.
NATO talks about a “historic milestone”
A NATO spokesperson confirmed that It is the first time that the Ukrainian navy leads and coordinates an opposing force within an Alliance exercise.
The organization called the event “a historic milestone” as it reflects Ukraine’s growing role in Western military training.
According to NATO, the Ukrainian leadership brought real combat experience, especially valuable because the country has been facing Russia in a high-intensity conflict for more than two years.
The objective of the exercise was precisely analyze new tactics and threatsespecially those related to unmanned systems. Ukrainian battlefield experience is accelerating the development of new capabilities within NATO to counter drone attacks.
It’s not the first warning
It is not the first time that allies have been surprised by Ukraine’s capabilities in this field. In autumn 2024, during exercise Hedgehog in Estonia, a small group of Ukrainian drone specialists managed to disable two NATO battalions in a simulation.
According to sources cited in Brussels, the allied military was “shocked” by how unprepared some units were for drone warfare. One of the problems detected was the high visibility of NATO command posts, which could be easily located using reconnaissance drones.
The lesson that strategists now draw is that modern warfare is changing faster than many military doctrines had anticipated. Cheap, autonomous, hard-to-detect drones are transforming the naval and land balanceforcing us to rethink tactics that had been practically intact for decades.
