Bulgaria Drone Attack: Contship Jet Hit by Three Sea Drones

The Liberian-flagged container ship Contship Jet has been struck by three uncrewed surface vessels in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone some 17 nautical miles east of Cape Kaliakra, in what the Bulgarian state news agency BTA counted as the fifth attack on a merchant ship in that zone since early October. Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov announced the strike on October 28, with the ship sailing from the Israeli port of Haifa to Constanța in Romania carrying 421 containers. All 18 crew members, 14 Filipino and four Ukrainian nationals, were rescued by the Bulgarian Navy and taken to Varna, while a maritime security source told Reuters that the vessel was badly damaged and listing. The attack highlights how far the naval war has spread from the waters off Odessa, with the costs now falling heavily on NATO’s two Black Sea members in a campaign no government has formally attributed.

The strike follows a sequence of attacks which has made the western Black Sea one of the most dangerous stretches of commercial water in Europe. Drones sank the Togo-flagged Alfa Watan roughly 70 nautical miles east of Byala on October 6. On October 13 the Guinea-Bissau-flagged HS Dignity was sunk east of Shabla while the Maltese-flagged Chelsea 3 was damaged, according to the same agency. A further cargo ship was sunk off Romania on October 23 with one crew member killed, the Associated Press reported, and Reuters estimates that the attacks have likely killed around two dozen seafarers in recent weeks. Ukraine has blamed Russia and Moscow has denied involvement, while Prime Minister Rumen Radev has said only that the attacks appear to benefit Russia, after Sofia took the earlier strikes to NATO without naming a culprit.

The Contship Jet was hit while the defence ministers of Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey were meeting in Sofia with their chiefs of defence, a session Stoyanov said had been organised at short notice as security deteriorated. The three governments adopted a joint statement condemning the attacks and agreed to set up a trilateral mechanism for consultations and information exchange, with Stoyanov stating: “We demand an immediate end to attacks that endanger the safety of commercial vessels.” Turkish Defence Minister Yaşar Güler said Ankara reserved all legal rights over attacks on Turkish-operated ships and directed his warning at both Moscow and Kiev, stating: “Both sides are repeatedly warned that commercial navigation must be kept outside the conflict zone.” The three states run the Black Sea Mine Countermeasures Task Group, a formation built to clear drifting mines rather than to intercept fast uncrewed boats.

The first sighting came from a French maritime patrol aircraft over the western Black Sea, which alerted the Bulgarian Navy’s operations centre, an indication of how heavily Sofia relies on allied surveillance to watch its economic zone. The Bulgarian Navy’s surface fleet is built around three former Belgian Wielingen class frigates, among them the Drazki and the Verni, which were designed in the early 1970s for anti-submarine and anti-ship warfare rather than for defence against small surface drones. Romania has leaned on air power instead, with two of its F-16s having shot down jet-powered Geran drones over the Black Sea near Sulina on October 17. The Contship Jet’s manifest listed lithium-ion batteries, corrosive acids and flammable liquids, although the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment reported no visible pollution in its first inspection.