BLACK SEA — The TLK-150, an 8-foot unmanned sea drone manufactured by Ukrainian defense company Toloka, has completed hundreds of missions off Ukraine's coast searching for underwater mines laid during Russia's invasion. The roughly 50-pound vehicle glides just below the surface of the Black Sea mapping underwater minefields, and its rotors can operate for over 1,200 miles before needing a recharge.

Since 2022, Russia has dropped thousands of mines across the Black Sea, using underwater explosives to deter vessels from docking in Ukraine's Black Sea ports. Ukraine initially relied on human divers to clear underwater mines, and over four years developed solutions including the TLK-150. Ukraine has more recent experience in demining operations than any other country.

"Without question, Ukraine is at the cutting edge of the mine action world. Technologies being developed here will change the way humanitarian demining is done," said Ed Crowther, mine action adviser with the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine, in a podcast interview.

The TLK-150 is the smallest of four sea drone models manufactured by Toloka. The company's drones serve as naval strike drones in addition to minesweepers, travel farther than other sea drones and transmit data simultaneously. The vehicle uses artificial intelligence identification tools to determine its position without relying on GPS, a feature designed to withstand the electronic jamming systems deployed across Ukraine's battlefield by Russia and Ukraine. Western drones have often failed tests in Ukraine due to signal jamming.

"Using conventional methods, you need to take the vehicle out of the water and connect a USB to the drone to get the data. In our case, the vehicle does everything. When it detects the mines, it transmits the information," said Dima Zelenskiy, founder of Toloka.

Locating mines remains a core technical challenge for minesweeping systems. "One of the hardest questions is finding the mines in the first place. If you are using a GPS connection on a mine sweeper, that can be easily jammed. And once you locate them, how do you transmit this data back?" said Emma Salisbury, a maritime security expert at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre.

The Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's energy normally passes, has remained almost entirely closed to ship traffic since Iran dropped mines across it in March. The U.S. Navy is using Littoral Combat Ships in the strait, which deploy helicopters and sea drones that use lasers and sonar to find mines. The Navy has two Littoral Combat Ships in service in the Middle East. The metal hulls of those ships force them to keep distance from minefields to avoid triggering mines, limiting the area they can cover when mapping. The ships deploy unmanned systems from manufacturers such as General Dynamics and RTX, some of which resemble the TLK-150 in traveling below the water using sonar and cameras.

The Pentagon said, "U.S. forces are addressing the risk of mines using manned and unmanned capabilities to ensure passage through the strait is safe." The U.S. military acquisition system is not designed to incorporate foreign technologies like Ukraine's demining drones, making rapid deployment unlikely. Sine Engineering received a $70 million investment from the U.S. Development Finance Corporation for a similar technology.