NYT: A fully autonomous Russian AI drone run by an Nvidia minicomputer killed 3 civilians in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia
A Russian drone guided entirely by an experimental artificial intelligence system killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia, according to an article in The New York Times (NYT).
Russian drones attacked a gas station on July 6, killing a 19-year-old university student and two men, ages 41 and 48.
Aftermath of the July 6, 2026, strike on a gas station in Zaporizhzhia
State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Facebook
The NYT’s account rests on the findings of Ukrainian drone experts, military officials, and forensic investigators who examined the wreckage of that drone and of other Russian Molniya drones that struck Zaporizhzhia. Here’s why they believe the drones were fully autonomous:
- The drones had no antennas for communicating with an operator, though they did carry video cameras.
- The drone that exploded and killed the three was flying in a group of about six. None of them was transmitting radio signals.
- The drones were launched at Zaporizhzhia in waves, with one large-scale attack following another.
- Inside the drones, investigators found Nvidia Jetson Orin minicomputers. Nvidia makes a large share of the chips that power the world’s most advanced AI systems. The minicomputers, which cost only a few hundred dollars, are believed to be what made the targeting decisions. Similar minicomputers have turned up in other Russian weapons.
- Ukrainian officials said the Nvidia minicomputer in the drone that struck Zaporizhzhia was not encrypted, allowing experts to view the terrain images loaded into the module. The drone could use those images to stay on its programmed course. The experts also examined the drone’s code, which, they said, showed what kinds of targets it had been trained to recognize and attack.
The drones are believed to work like this: an operator programs a drone to fly toward a specific target, such as a gas station; as it approaches, the drone picks its final target — propane tanks, for instance — on its own, drawing on prior training to recognize such containers.
A “Molniya” drone
Oleksandr Klymenko / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA
Ukrainian officials said some of the Russian AI-equipped drones exploded during the attack, while others failed to detonate and stayed largely intact. They showed NYT reporters the wreckage of two such drones, and the reporters photographed the Nvidia module inside each. The wreckage of the drone that killed the three civilians does not appear in the NYT article. Ukraine had found similar wreckage — no antenna, but a camera and a minicomputer — even before the July 6 attack.
Both Russia and Ukraine are experimenting with AI in several drone models. Until now, machine vision has been used at scale only in the final stage of an attack, locking onto a target automatically after an operator has already chosen it. Fully autonomous AI is meant to remove the human from that final targeting decision.
Ukraine said Russia has been testing autonomous AI drones in Zaporizhzhia since May. In Russian-annexed Crimea, Ukraine’s armed forces are conducting their own tests of AI systems that select targets independently, former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said. No deaths from those attacks have been reported so far.
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