Russian forces have begun using drones in Ukraine that can independently select their final target using artificial intelligence, without operator input, The New York Times reported, citing Ukrainian military officials, drone experts, and specialists who examined drone wreckage.
According to the newspaper, on July 6, one such drone attacked Zaporizhzhia. The operator directed it toward a gas station, but the drone autonomously chose propane tanks as its target. Failing to reach them, it crashed into the wall of a residential building and exploded, killing three people.
Analysis of the wreckage showed the drone was equipped with a Jetson Orin mini-computer made by U.S. company Nvidia. Ukrainian officials said the chip was not encrypted, allowing specialists to view uploaded terrain images and examine code showing what types of targets the drone was trained to recognize. It had no antennas for operator communication.
Colonel Serhiy Minaiev, commander of air defense in Zaporizhzhia, called this a threat to the entire world: "In a few years, we will be living in the movie 'Terminator.' This is not a joke. Machines are making decisions to strike."
Both sides in the conflict have already used AI in the final stage of guidance, with a human selecting the target and an algorithm then steering the drone to it, NYT writes. The new generation of drones removes the human from the final target selection, the newspaper notes.
Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said the strike in Zaporizhzhia was the first documented case of civilian deaths from a Russian drone with such a system.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Defense Ministry also reported that a Jetson Orin was found in a new Russian missile type, the S-71M "Monokhrom" — a hybrid strike system combining features of a cruise missile and a loitering munition. The mini-computer was mounted on a board marked "Made in China," NYT notes. How the Russian defense industry obtained Nvidia products is unknown. The company said Jetson Orin is not sold in Russia but is available on the secondary market, where Nvidia cannot control sales.
Ukraine has also tested autonomous strike systems. Former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told NYT that one was used in annexed Crimea against fuel storage and military equipment, with no civilian deaths in those attacks.
Earlier, The Atlantic reported that in early 2026, Ukrainian officials proposed a plan to President Volodymyr Zelensky to send up to 1,000 autonomous drones to Moscow's airports in a single night to close Moscow's airspace to civilian flights. According to the magazine's sources, the president feared this could be seen as "piracy" if the drones hit a civilian airliner.