Naval warfare has long been dominated by large fleets on the open ocean, but current development shows a clear shift towards unmanned platforms. In today’s conflicts, naval battles are increasingly fought in littoral areas, where threats simultaneously come from the sea, land, and air. This makes warfare more complex than ever and requires new ways of understanding it. The classical theories are shaped for open-ocean combat and do not capture the dynamics that characterize modern littoral warfare. Previous research has mainly surveyed isolated events but lacks deeper understanding of how unmanned systems and their operational capabilities have contributed to success in littoral warfare. The study examines and describes Ukraine’s use of unmanned systems in littoral warfare in the Black Sea with the help of Milan Vego’s theory on littoral warfare by answering the question: How has Ukraine employed unmanned systems in littoral warfare and in what ways have their operational capabilities contributed to success? The purpose is to understand and describe how Ukraine has employed unmanned systems in littoral warfare and in what ways their operational capabilities have manifested in success in modern littoral warfare. The analysis shows that Ukraine has used unmanned systems in various operations to conduct reconnaissance, surface warfare and air defence. These capabilities have temporarily denied Russia access to the Black Sea and therefore Ukraine’s harbour trade has been protected. The conclusions underline that various and coordinated use of unmanned systems can be decisive in modern littoral conflicts and provide relevance insights for other costal states with similar geography.