Ukrainian sailor Roman mans a machine gun during a patrol on the Black Sea on an American-donated patrol boat on July 23, 2026. (Svetlana Shkolnikova/Stars and Stripes)

Stars and Stripes provides us a report on what the Ukrainians are doing with patrol boats donated by the US.

The report refers to former four 110 foot USCG Island class cutters, one of which has been lost, and six 44 foot Metal Shark Defiant 40 patrol boats.

• “Remembering Coast Guard Cutter Cushing” –MyCG, March 2022
• “Ukraine’s New U.S. Supplied Combat Boats Already Patrolling Black Sea” –Naval News, Nov. 2022
• “U.S. Navy’s New 40-Foot Defiant Patrol Boat” –Naval News, Plus FMS Patrol Boat, June, 2022
• “US Supplying Ukraine with 23 Metal Shark Military Vessels” –Seapower, June 2022
• “Metal Shark set for full-rate production of Navy’s next-gen patrol boats” –MarineLog, Dec., 2019

There are lessons learned reflected in the report including that sometimes smaller is better and specifically about countering drones, “Two different machine guns are typically needed to down one of the Shaheds — the 7.62mm M240 tends to be too weak on its own so the 12.7mm M2 Browning at the stern has to be fired as well, Roman said.”