Ukraine ties Nvidia Jetson Orin to fatal autonomous drone strike

Ukrainian air defense commanders and the forensic team that examined the wreckage told The New York Times that a Russian Molniya drone which struck a Zaporizhzhia gas station on July 6, killing three civilians, was flying without a human pilot in its final approach. Operators sent it toward the station; once it got close, "onboard software chose the exact target on its own," most likely the propane tanks it had been trained to recognize.

The three dead were named as Tetiana Bubynets, a 19-year-old college student, Oleksiy Svirin, 41, and Roman Karpiy, 48. Wreckage from the July 6 strike and other Molniya attacks on Zaporizhzhia contained Nvidia Jetson Orin minicomputers and no radio antennas. The module was not encrypted. Ukrainian officials said they could read the terrain imagery loaded for navigation and the code that told the drone which objects to attack.

A CSIS analyst tracking the program told the Times this is "the first documented case of a Russian self-targeting drone causing deaths." Nvidia said the Jetson Orin modules are "not designed for military purposes" and described them as "consumer-grade products sold to students, developers, and startups for a wide range of beneficial applications." The company said the parts are not sold in Russia and could only have reached the drone via resellers; the circuit board carrying the chip in the recovered wreckage was stamped "Made in China."

The Molniya is the fourth Russian weapon family Ukrainian investigators have tied to the same Nvidia board, after the V2U attack drone, a Shahed MS001 variant, and the S-71M Monochrome cruise missile. The story lands the same day Taiwanese prosecutors indicted nine people over Nvidia B300 servers smuggled to China.