Ukraine is mounting rockets on its sea drones and is using them to hit land targets, official says

• A Ukranian official told the Financial Times the country was mounting rockets onto its naval drones.
• The official said they were being used to strike Russian positions in occupied Mykolaiv.

Ukraine has placed rockets onto its feared sea drones and is using them to attack Russian land targets, a Ukrainian official says.

Citing an unnamed Ukrainian intelligence official, the Financial Times' Ukraine correspondent, Christopher Miller, said in a post on X that Sea Baby naval drones were now being mounted with Grad multiple-launch rocket systems.

The official said they'd been used to strike Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit in the occupied Mykolaiv region on Monday.

An unnamed security source seemed to confirm the upgrade and the attack to the Kyiv Independent.

"This technological solution is already showing powerful results," the source told the outlet.

"So new surprises await the enemy," they added.

The Security Service of Ukraine didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

But a video shared by Russian and Ukrainian sources showing a naval drone firing several rockets appears to back up the reports.

According to Anton Gerashchenko, a former advisor to Ukraine's internal-affairs ministry who shared the footage on X, the video shows an unmanned surface drone "launching missiles" at Russian positions near the Kinburn Spit.

The Ukrainian military website Militarnyi reported that the video showed a Ukrainian unmanned boat mounted with an MLRS firing at least six shells at Russian positions.

BI couldn't independently verify the time or location of the video.

In a post of its own, Ukraine's defense ministry said that Sea Baby drones were equipped with "Grad" rocket launchers and that they had become "even deadlier" for the Russian fleet.

Ukraine has frequently deployed its naval drones over the course of the war, outfitting them with larger warheads and using them to devastating effect against Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Russia said it destroyed six naval drones last week in what might have been Ukraine's biggest drone attack, with targets including the two major Russian naval ports of Sevastopol and Novorossiysk, the Kyiv Independent reported.

Ukraine said in January it was using sea drones fitted with missiles to attack Russia's Black Sea Fleet, and it appeared to be using heat-seeking missiles to strike Russian naval assets earlier this month.