In the contested waters of the Black Sea, a threshold was crossed on Saturday that military historians had long anticipated but never before documented: two unmanned surface vessels engaged each other in direct combat, with a Ukrainian naval drone sinking its Russian counterpart. The engagement was modest in scale but immense in meaning — a signal that the age of autonomous naval warfare has moved from theory to fact. As both nations continue to absorb the lessons of a war that has already reshaped how the world thinks about drones, missiles, and attrition, the sea itself is becoming a laborat