Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing, bonus story of the week.

Today on Forbes, this new company will build Ukraine's deadly drone boats for Western

militaries.

The oil tanker MKD, V. Ome, was on the final leg of a journey from the Netherlands to Saudi

Arabia's Ross-Tanura refinery as it sailed

around the coast of Muscat Oman last week. Then the tanker, which is the length of two football

fields, was rocked by an explosion. Oman's maritime security center said it had been hit by an

unmanned drone boat, sparking a fire in its engine room and killing

one of its crew members. The drone boat's origin is unknown. In the last few years,

Iran's allies in Yemen have mounted several attacks on freighters using sea drones. But this attack

marks the first time an unmanned vessel has been used in the current Gulf

conflict, which began more than a week ago when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran and killed its

supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini. Autonomous boats are increasingly becoming a part of

modern warfare, most notably in the Ukraine War, where the country has

effectively used them to take on Russia's much more powerful navy.

At the start of the war in 2022, the Russian Black Sea fleet was threatening Ukraine's coastline

and blocking critical grain exports. Just over four years later, it is largely confined to port in Sevastopol Crimea, thanks

to a series of attacks mounted by a fleet of drone boats operated by Ukraine's intelligence

services.

The speedboat-sized unmanned vessels, laden with explosives, have been responsible for at least

16 strikes where they rammed head-on

into Russian Navy vessels. The boats, dubbed Magura, have now also been kitted out with

...