By now you have probably seen the video. A low, gray Ukrainian boat skips across the Black Sea with nobody aboard, slams into the side of a Russian warship, and vanishes in a column of water and fire.<\/p>\n
For about two years that clip has been the public face of the naval drone: cheap, fast, expendable, and very much a one-way trip. A Baltimore company called BlackSea Technologies just rolled out a boat that quietly rewrites the expendable part.<\/p>\n
It is called the Comet, and it showed up at two of the biggest U.S. defense shows of the year wearing missiles. Not the ram-and-explode kind of payload, either. The Comet carries what defense observers identified as a mix of strike missiles for hitting ships and air-defense missiles for shooting down aircraft, all bolted to a 43-foot hull with no crew anywhere on it.<\/p>\n
The United States has fielded plenty of uncrewed boats that scout, sweep mines, or haul cargo. An armed one that can hit a fast attack craft and swat a drone or helicopter out of the sky in the same sortie is a newer thing, at least for the American side. Ukraine already showed the world it works.<\/p>\n
Strip away the acronyms and the Comet’s headline feature is simple: it can shoot up and out. Mounted on the bow is a dual-rail launcher from Sierra Nevada Corporation called BRAWLR, holding four ready-to-fire missiles. Two of them are larger weapons that outlets covering the unveiling matched to the AGM-114 Hellfire, the precision missile the U.S. has used against armor and small craft for decades.<\/p>\n
The other two are shorter and stubbier, visually consistent with the AIM-9 Sidewinder family, the heat-seeking air-to-air missile usually slung under a fighter jet. BlackSea has not publicly confirmed the exact missiles, which is worth saying plainly, but the launcher arrangement only makes sense if the company wants the boat to fight surface and air targets at the same time.<\/p>\n
That combination is the part people in the trade keep circling back to, because most drone boats pick a lane. Interesting Engineering<\/a> noted the setup is rarely seen on uncrewed craft this small.<\/p>\n The logic is almost embarrassingly practical. The two things most likely to kill a drone boat are a helicopter and a fast attack craft, so BlackSea gave it a Hellfire for the boat and a Sidewinder for the helicopter and called it a day.<\/p>\n Up front there is an electro-optical and infrared targeting turret to find and track whatever it is shooting at, backed by a Simrad navigation radar and a Leonardo DRS RADA array. There is also a 30mm gun from EOS Defense Systems for closer work.<\/p>\n This is where the Comet stops looking like a science project and starts looking like a catch-up move. On December 31, 2024, a Ukrainian Magura V5 sea drone fired a repurposed R-73 missile and shot down a Russian Mi-8 helicopter over the Black Sea near Crimea, which Ukraine’s military intelligence called the first time an uncrewed surface vessel had ever destroyed an aerial target.<\/p>\n A few months later it got more pointed. In May 2025, Ukraine said its upgraded Magura V7 drones used American-made AIM-9 Sidewinders to shoot down two Russian Su-30 fighter jets, the first combat aircraft ever destroyed by a boat with nobody on it.<\/p>\n The man who runs Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, was blunt about which missile did the job. His crews run several types, he told Kyiv Post<\/a>, but “the best results come from the AIM-9.”<\/p>\n These are Ukrainian claims, and Russia has not confirmed the losses, but the footage and the photos of a Magura hauling Sidewinders have been picked apart by analysts for over a year now. So when BlackSea shows up with a boat that appears to carry the same AIM-9X-family missile, it is not introducing the concept. It is industrializing one that already has a combat record written in someone else’s war.<\/p>\n For all the firepower, the Comet is not a big boat. It runs 43 feet long (13.1 meters) with a beam under 10 feet, riding a semi-planing aluminum hull pushed by two Volvo Penta D6 engines.<\/p>\n A Baird Maritime<\/a> vessel review put the top speed above 45 knots, with a Seakeeper gyro stabilizer keeping it level enough to aim in rough water. It can haul 10,000 pounds of fuel, sensors, and weapons split between forward and aft bays, which is where that BRAWLR launcher and everything else gets bolted on.<\/p>\n Range depends entirely on how heavy you load it. Light, at a 3,000-pound payload and 40 knots, BlackSea quotes about 1,000 nautical miles in moderate seas. Pile on 7,500 pounds and slow to 20 knots and that drops to roughly 500.<\/p>\n The hull itself is not new, which is part of the trick. BlackSea says it is built on a design with more than two decades of operational service with the U.S. Navy, and that head start is reportedly why the company managed to turn the whole boat around in a little over a month.<\/p>\n There is also a signature-reduction wrap from a firm called DECPT meant to make it harder to spot in contested water, because a drone boat you can see coming is just a target.<\/p>\n BlackSea pitches the Comet as a gap-filler, sitting between the tiny tactical drones the Navy already buys by the hundred and the large uncrewed combat vessels still years from the fleet. The idea is that a cheap, fast, armed boat can take on the dangerous, boring jobs close to a hostile shore and free up crewed warships for work that actually needs people.<\/p>\n The Comet’s mission list reads like a wishlist: counter-drone defense, mine countermeasures, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare, maritime surveillance, and escorting high-value ships.<\/p>\n That last one has a very specific customer. Todd Greene, BlackSea’s director of advanced technologies, pointed out at SOF Week 2026 in Tampa that the Navy’s new Landing Ship Medium carries no weapons of its own, and a Comet could ride alongside it as armed escort.<\/p>\n BlackSea’s president, Bob Pudney, framed the boat as bringing the company’s “proven operational success” to special operations forces. All of it lands in the middle of a Pentagon scramble to field large numbers of uncrewed systems fast, the same pressure driving everything from China’s submarine-size underwater drones<\/a> to allied programs that put machines where sailors used to go.<\/p>\n It would be easy to file the Comet under defense-show vaporware, except BlackSea has a delivery record most of its competitors do not. The company already builds the GARC, a 16-foot scout drone it has shipped to the Defense Department in the hundreds.<\/p>\n U.S. naval forces have run GARCs in the Middle East under Operation Epic Fury, where Reuters reported the little boats had logged more than 450 hours by late March, and again in the Baltic during NATO’s BALTOPS 2026 exercise. BlackSea’s chief executive told SOF Week attendees the Baltimore factory now turns out more than 30 boats a month.<\/p>\n That track record is the whole sales pitch. BlackSea is not the only company chasing this market. Rivals like HavocAI’s Rampage and the Seasats Lightfish are pitching the Navy their own uncrewed boats, and the broader race now runs underwater too, from Australia’s Ghost Shark drone submarine<\/a> to Lockheed’s hull-clinging underwater drone<\/a> that hitches a ride on friendly warships.<\/p>\n What BlackSea is betting is that an armed, fast, genuinely buildable boat beats a more ambitious one that exists mostly in a slideshow.<\/p>\n For years the naval drone was something you sacrificed, a clever way to trade a few hundred thousand dollars for a shot at a multimillion-dollar ship. The Comet is part of a quieter shift, where the uncrewed boat stops being the bullet and starts being the gun.<\/p>\n Whether the U.S. Navy buys it in the numbers BlackSea is tooling up for is a separate question, and the missile loadout the company has been coy about will matter a lot when contracts get written. But the basic claim on the dock in Tampa was not subtle. A boat this small that can shoot at ships and aircraft, built in about the time it takes to close on a house, is no longer a thing one country gets to do alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By now you have probably seen the video. A low, gray Ukrainian boat skips across the Black Sea with nobody … <\/p>\nUkraine already proved a sea drone can knock planes out of the sky<\/h2>\n
Forty-three feet, 45 knots, and a one-month build<\/h2>\n
Why the Navy wants a small boat that fills a big gap<\/h2>\n
BlackSea is not shipping a render<\/h2>\n
From the bullet to the gun<\/h2>\n