Tom Blackwell -
This marine drone washed ashore in Crimea last month, with photos of it posted on social media. H.I. Sutton says the water jet's distinctive shape and design matches those of the Sea-Doo.© Provided by National Post
They’re a fixture on countless Canadian lakes, a source of high-speed amusement for some — and noisy aggravation for others.
Now the Sea-Doo brand of jet ski may be at the heart of Ukraine’s latest weapon against Russian invaders, a remote-controlled innovation that could play a growing role in naval warfare.
A marine drone like those used in the recent attack on ships of Moscow’s Black-Sea fleet appeared to be propelled by a water-jet — and probably an engine — from one of the archetypal Canadian watercraft, says a British naval-defence expert.
The drone washed ashore in Crimea last month, with photos of it posted on social media. H.I. Sutton, who publishes the Covert Shores website and is the author of a number of naval-warfare books, says he could clearly see a water jet in the pictures, prompting him to compare the image to photos of commercial jet skis made by various manufacturers.
The distinctive shape and design of the jet matched those of the Sea-Doo and bore a sticker saying “No step” that is also unique to craft made by Quebec’s Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP), he said in an interview. It likely came from a recent model — the GTX or Fish Pro.
“It is a Sea-Doo (water jet),” said Sutton, who posted about the drone on the U.S. Naval Institute website. “It’s beyond any reasonable doubt. You could do what I did and look at photographs of every conceivable commercial jet ski and you’d say, ‘the pattern is distinctive.’… Sea-Doo shape things differently to other competitors.”
He said he wasn’t alone in noticing the origins of the drone’s propulsion system. Sutton knows naval officers who have their own personal watercraft and also made the connection. An aluminum hull had been built around the engine and jet, with what appeared to be a satellite receiver on top that could be used in controlling it remotely, and detonators in the bow.
BRP spokeswoman Biliana Necheva said Tuesday the company couldn’t speculate on the source of the parts without more details or serial numbers, but stressed “our products are not designed for military purposes” and sales are made only to end users, not resellers.
The company played no part in creating the Ukrainian vessel, she said.
Russia’s defence ministry says nine aerial drones and seven autonomous boats attacked its ships at the port of Sevastopol in Crimea on Saturday. The unmanned marine weapons appear to have been jet powered, but it’s unclear if they used the Sea-Doo equipment like the one found earlier, said Sutton.
If they were propelled by the Quebec firm’s gear, it would be the second possible Canadian link to the autonomous-vehicle attack.
Russia has said that the aerial drones used navigational modules manufactured in Canada . That assertion couldn’t be verified, but the federal government did earlier make a donation to Ukraine of precision targeting cameras, which are used in the Turkish Bayraktar drones that have proven an effective tool against Russian forces.
Russia claims that all the drones were destroyed, with only minor damage to a minesweeper. It later announced that because of the attack it would no longer protect Ukrainian ships taking grain to market, as it agreed to do under an earlier agreement.
But little information has been released about the incident, leaving analysts unclear about the extent of the harm done.
A low-light video posted online purports to show the view from marine drones as they approach warships, including one with a similar profile to the frigate Admiral Makarov, the Black Sea fleet’s new flagship after the Ukrainians sunk the missile-cruiser Moskva in April. Even some damage to the ships would mark the operation as a success, said Sutton.
And it appeared the Russian fleet began behaving differently after the original, Sea-Doo powered drone was found in September, keeping closer to port and being more vigilant, he said.
But “you can’t keep your guard up very long.”
Independent experts say the attack heralds a new era of marine combat.
What happened last weekend to Russia’s Black Sea fleet shows that expendable drones will pose a significant threat to “multi-million dollar ships,” said researcher Tayfun Ozberk on the Naval News website.
“In future conflicts … drone swarms will be a major problem for large combat ships,” he wrote.
Sutton said military experts are already accepting the marine-drone trend as “inevitable and obvious” but he gave credit to Ukraine for actually putting the idea into action.
“The reality is that very few people thought of that, navies didn’t think of that.”
He said such autonomous kamikaze boats have a number of advantages, including the fact they don’t risk the life of a human operator and are “incredibly cheap” compared to most military equipment.
Personal watercraft work by the internal engine sucking up water, then shooting it out the back, forcing the boat forward. The invention is credited to American Clayton Jacobson , who first licensed it to Bombardier as the Sea-Doo in 1968, then to Kawasaki as the Jet Ski.
While re-purposing the engine to power a drone is new, the special forces of several countries already use them as actual vehicles, noted Sutton. Greek commandos are among those that employ Sea-Doos, one photo showing two soldiers on each vessel, the passenger resting a sub-machine gun on the driver’s shoulders.
Necheva says BRP, based in Valcourt, Que., allows its dealers to only sell to end users, not resellers, for recreational and professional purposes, such as water rescue.
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