The unencrypted module let Ukrainian investigators read the drone's terrain maps and targeting code.
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Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the paper it's the first documented case of civilian deaths caused by a Russian drone using fully autonomous targeting. The dead were Tetiana Bubynets, a 19-year-old accounting student, and two men aged 41 and 48.
Human operators launched the drone toward the gas station, per the report, but the final aim point was selected onboard by software trained to recognize objects such as propane tanks. The aircraft failed to clear an apartment building on its approach, struck a wall, and detonated near people sheltering below, rather than striking its chosen target.
The strike drone flew in a group of roughly half a dozen aircraft, none of which emitted radio traffic, Ukrainian air defense officials said. Modules recovered from this attack and from intact test drones carried no encryption, so investigators could examine both the terrain imagery loaded for visual navigation and the code specifying which object classes the drone had been trained to attack. "Machines are making decisions to strike," Col. Serhiy Minaiev, Zaporizhzhia's air defense commander, told the NYT . Russia is understood to have begun AI-guided test flights of the mass-produced, fixed-wing Molniya in May, after months of self-targeting trials with the V2U.
Nvidia confirmed to the New York Times that modules photographed in the recovered drones were Jetson Orin minicomputers, hardware that sells for a few hundred dollars. "Our Jetson Orin modules are consumer-grade products sold to students, developers, and startups for a wide range of beneficial applications," an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom's Hardware . "They are not available in Russia and are not designed for military purposes. Pre-owned Jetsons are available through many reseller channels. Although we cannot track products after they are sold, if we determine that any customer is violating U.S. export controls, we will take appropriate action."
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/drones/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/drones/nvidia-jetson-orin-guided-the-russian-ai-drone-that-killed-three-civilians-in-ukraine-forensic-teams-say#main
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