Military technology is a field driven by change – the constant pursuit to be better, faster, stronger. Certain technological achievements like guns and planes have happened in the purview of the public and have revolutionized the world of war as we know it. Yet many technological changes have occurred under the radar, in military labs…
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Killer Robots
The United States Army's Future Combat Systems Project, which aims to manufacture a robot army that will be ready for deployment by 2012, is only the latest and most dramatic example of military interest in the use of artificially intelligent systems in modern warfare. This paper considers the ethics of the decision to send artificially…
Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military
The increased military employment of remotely operated aerial vehicles, also known as drones, has raised a wide variety of important ethical questions, concerns, and challenges. Many of these have not yet received the serious scholarly examination such worries rightly demand. This volume attempts to fill that gap through sustained analysis of a wide range of…
Predators or plowshares? Arms control of robotic weapons
With the development of the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, robotic weapons came of age. The operations of this unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern Africa in the last few years have given us a glimpse of the future of high-tech war. It is a future in which thousands of miles separate…
Prescription drones: On the techno-biopolitical regimes of contemporary ‘ethical killing’
As military technologies progress at a pace that challenges human cognitive and reasoning capacities, it is becoming ever more difficult to appraise the ethics of their use. In this article, I argue that the contours of ethical killing are shaped and constrained by a medical discourse that has its basis in a deeper regime of…
Routledge Handbook of Ethics and War: Just War Theory in the 21st Century
This new handbook offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary extensions and alternatives to the just war tradition in the field of the ethics of war. The modern history of just war has typically assumed the primacy of four particular elements: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, the state actor, and the solider. This book will…
Twenty Seconds to Comply: Autonomous Weapon Systems and the Recognition of Surrender
The United States Department of Defense defines autonomous weapons as weapon systems that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator. Autonomous weapon systems are widely predicted to be the future of war fighting, at least in the armed forces of highly industrialized nations. Consequently, there is now a…
Why We Really Should Ban Autonomous Weapons: A Response
Autonomous weapons could lead to low-cost micro-robots that can be deployed to anonymously kill thousands. That's just one reason why they should be banned.
Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design
This report is designed as a preliminary investigation into the risk and ethics issues related to autonomous military systems, with a particular focus on battlefield robotics as perhaps the most controversial area. It is intended to help inform policymakers, military personnel, scientists, as well as the broader public who collectively influence such developments. Our goal…
Autonomous Weapons: Are You Sure These are Killer Robots? Can We Talk About It?
The rise of autonomous weapons is creating understandable concern for the international community as it is impossible to predict exactly what will happen with the technology. This uncertainty has led some to advocate for a preemptive ban on the technology. Yet the emergence of a new means of warfare is not a unique phenomenon and…
From Killer Machines to Doctrines and Swarms, or Why Ethics of Military Robotics Is Not (Necessarily) About Robots
Ethical reflections on military robotics can be enriched by a better understanding of the nature and role of these technologies and by putting robotics into context in various ways. Discussing a range of ethical questions, this paper challenges the prevalent assumptions that military robotics is about military technology as a mere means to an end,…