It had all the thrill of a daring commando raid, filmed live. But Saturday’s dawn raid on Russia’s Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol was not carried out by elite soldiers, but by 16 drones, nine in the air and seven at sea – prompting questions as to whether the attack represented a revolutionary moment in the history of warfare.
Three years ago, it was Dominic Cummings, before his eventful tenure at Downing St, who wrote “A teenager will be able to deploy a drone from their smartphone to sink one of these multibillion-dollar platforms,” a reference to the Royal Navy’s two new aircraft carriers, built at a total cost of £6.4bn. That time, he may have been right.
