On the night of June 3rd to 4th, Ukrainian drones were visiting the occupied Crimea. They engaged a load of valuable targets and inflicted sizable losses on the Russian occupiers. One of the targets was a rather large patrol boat. And it got hit pretty hard.
This is how a Svetlyak-class boat normally looks like. Image credit: Andrey Korzun via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Ukrainians used an FP-2 drone to engage a Russian Svetlyak-class (Project 10410) patrol boat near Yurkine, occupied Crimea, around 260 km from the front line. That drone probably carried a warhead of 105-158 kg, and the strike was direct. There is no other way of saying it – that ship got serious damage, even if it didn’t sink. In fact, the strike affected its superstructure the most, so it probably didn’t even lose propulsion. But it is not going to come back into service any time soon.
What is a Svetlyak-class patrol boat? Well, it is a rather big warship, primarily designed to patrol the coastal areas and protect ports. First Svetlyak-class boats were commissioned in 1988, but they are still being built, which means that the boat hit in that video could be relatively young.
A Svetlyak-class boat is 49.2 metres long and carries a crew of 28 sailors. It is armed with a 76 mm AK-176M naval gun, autocannons, machine guns, grenade launchers, Igla-1M surface-to-air missiles and other weaponry. Boats of this class can reach a speed of 52-59 km/h, which is pretty good going for a boat of this size. In fact, that one in the video was hit while underway.
The FP-2 is an unmanned airplane. While it is undoubtedly a highly manoeuvrable machine, being able to hit a moving target is impressive. Not for the lesser reason that the fact that the attack was carried out around 260 km from the front line at night in a heavily guarded Russian-controlled territory. The area is interesting too, because it is not very far from the illegal Crimean bridge – it is likely that this particular Svetlyak-class boat was tasked with guarding the structure. Ukrainians might be softening the defences around that area, since they’ve been attacking Russian logistics elsewhere recently.
Finally, we know that the crew of this particular Svetlyak-class boat most likely knew that the attack was incoming. In fact, we can see several sailors in that video. The boat was maneuvering, moving, and sailors were most likely looking around trying to understand what direction the attack was coming from. In fact, some open source intelligence analysts believe that they can see a soldier manning a machine gun, but he is looking the wrong way. Because it was a night, they had no chance of visually detecting this incoming threat.
It would be interesting to know the cost of this boat. It is most likely tens of millions of dollars. But then again, it did not sink.
Written by Povilas M.
Sources: bayraktar_1love on X, Wikipedia
