DoD group seeks to give autonomy to armed drones

By Stephen Trimble, JDW Americas Bureau Chief
Janes Defense Weekly
Oct. 09, 2006

A proposal, unveiled publicly in September but never before publicised, would give "armed autonomous systems" the authority to shoot to destroy hostile weapon systems but not suspected combatants. Accordingly, any people killed or injured in the attack would be considered the collateral damage of a successful strike on a legitimate target.

"If you stop and think about what this is, it really is a new paradigm for conducting warfare," John S Canning, a chief engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center and one of the authors of the proposal, told Jane's on 3 October.

However, experts on the laws of war contacted by Jane's were not persuaded that the group's proposal would pass legal review. The chance that innocent civilians or even a disproportionate number of combatants could be killed by the misjudgment of a robotic system would still be the over-riding factor.

"You better have a human looking through that screen", before the unmanned system takes a shot, said Gary Solis, who recently retired as the law of war professor at the US Military Academy. The laws of armed conflict require that for any attack to be legitimate, the attacker must be able to discriminate between combatants and civilians, as well as avoid creating damage that is disproportionate to the threat.

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© 2006 Jane's Information Group
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