Drones with live payloads increasingly found in Black Sea: expert

War-related objects found in the Black Sea, where Ukraine and Russia are increasingly using unmanned drones, have more than doubled in six months, maritime risk expert Ambrey said Thursday.

At least a third carried of them carried live payloads. The objects include unexploded ordnance, drones and other unmanned vehicles found washed ashore or floating at sea, it said.

Fifty-six such objects were discovered in the Black Sea basin between March and August, compared with 27 in the six previous months, an Ambrey report said.

The increase has been concentrated in Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish waters, with the trend expected to continue.

Eight further discoveries were reported in the first seven days of September.

“More and more of these systems get shot down, or are disrupted by electronic warfare. And so they fall into the water,” Tomas Alexa, a senior analyst for Europe at Ambrey, told AFP on Thursday.

“Crews cannot tell a decoy airframe from a live one by sight, and should not try,” the press release warned.

Alexa described a case in which fishermen caught an object in their nets.

He also referred to footage he had seen of a client with an offshore installation using one of its watercraft to push a sea drone away.

Offshore energy infrastructure is particularly at risk, Alexa said, with some clients “seriously concerned”.

“Unlike vessels, these structures are static so they are subject to currents and whatever washes near to them,” he said.

The report says unmanned vehicles, rather than sea mines, are now the main hazard in the basin and that discoveries are likely underreported.

Ambrey gathers information from merchant vessels, as well as other sources and open-source intelligence, for its analysis.