Russia has entered a new phase in its development of artificial intelligence-powered unmanned aerial vehicles. According to statements made by Ukraine, the Russian army is field testing a new drone called the MS001, powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Orin supercomputer. The vehicle is notable for its autonomous mobility and target selection capabilities.
Russia is working on AI drone technology
Ukrainian Chief of the General Staff, Major General Vladyslav Klochkov, stated that the MS001 processes real-time data in the field, analyzes its environment, makes decisions, and executes attacks without external commands.
The system’s advanced thermal vision equipment, real-time telemetry tracking, and swarm operation capabilities make it highly effective in the field. The MS001 also stands out for its resistance to GPS jamming and target discrimination capabilities. Klochkov stated that the drone can select priority targets and adjust its route accordingly in real time.
The drone’s processing power comes from Nvidia’s $249 Jetson Orin module. Unveiled in December 2024, this system features 67 trillion INT8 operations per second (TOPS), 102 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a six-core Arm CPU, and a GPU featuring Nvidia’s Ampere architecture. This hardware offers the capability to perform AI-based analyses in the field.
The wreckage of an MS001 drone downed by Ukrainian forces last month provided important clues about the vehicle’s technological infrastructure. The downed sample contained a thermal camera suitable for night vision and low visibility, a Nasir GPS system protected against spoofed GPS signals, and a CRPA antenna. Also noteworthy were on-site programmable FPGA chips and a radio modem used for swarm communication.
The MS001’s design is believed to be derived from the Iranian Shahed drones. Another Russian drone using the Jetson Orin, the V2U, is powered by a Chinese-made Leetop A603 board and is used for kamikaze missions.
The US halted advanced semiconductor and chip exports to Russia as of early 2022, placing hundreds of companies and intermediaries on its sanctions list. However, components seized in the field reveal that these sanctions were circumvented through various channels. Russia has not yet made any statement regarding MS001.
