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Search: battlefield robots

16 Jul

...not have in advanced military technology, asymmetric warfare, and international law. “Reports” from HRW and Amnesty claiming to dissect complex battlefield events are a mix of unverifiable “eyewitness” allegations and speculation based on a few scraps of questionable (at best) information. Look at HRW’s latest bogus “report” on IDF use of drones or Amnesty's 127-pager on Gaza. A few people collecting "testimony" and looking at damage after a battle cannot possibly be able to reach the conclusions claimed by the authors. And the obsessive focus on Israel gets HRW and...
16.07.09 | |

25 Jan

...Commander in Chief for 4 years. His power therein is not contingent on his current poll numbers. He should certainly heed the opinion of the people, but ultimately, the judgement call is his. For true democratic control of the war, the people would require access to all our battlefield knowledge and information. Security makes this impractical, and the limitations of each citizen's time does as well. William J. Neill As a preface to what you read below, I am neither a Constitutional scholar nor an academic. I served in the...
25.01.07 | |

28 Jul

...detain people on the battlefield who are "innocent." There is simply no incentive for this behavior -- yet many on this board think it happens on a daily basis and would stretch any norm to keep it from happening. Meanwhile, I do deeply worry that the occasional innocent capture will be covered up by the administration, because it has every incentive to do so. Please note, I am not saying that what the Bush administration does is either lex lata or lex ferenda, I am just saying that there are...
28.07.08 | |

19 Oct

...value of a drone on the battlefield as anything more than a novelty. Once the war on terror started, and the value of drones became apparent to everyone. The Air Force jumped into the game and tried to muscle out the CIA. Unfortunately, almost immediately the Air Force drone program was caught in the inevitable Pentagon procurement death spiral where large numbers of a good enough system (predators/reapers) are sacrificed for fewer of a perfect-but as yet undeveloped system, see F-35. In the war on terror the drone's best asset...
19.10.11 | |

12 Oct

...standard. Whether it is the proper legal standard for necessity or not, it appears to address the necessity of the resort to force in a country without a battlefield. Unfortunately, I am not sure whether it can be said that the fact sheet contains an ad bellum proportionality standard, though it purports to impose a strict in bello standard. Jordan For evidence that the Obama Doctrine is in the alternative (i.e., both law of war paradigm and self-defense paradigm -- Koh, et al.) see http://ssrn.com/abstract=2402414 However, the U.S. cannot be...
12.10.14 | |

20 Oct

...or militia, or a law enforcement agency or civil defense force, they would meet combatant immunity criteria under the third Geneva Convention, or even the API provision Michael cites above. I, like Michael, have read in (unclassified) places that the CIA is being trained in the laws of war by JAGs. This may help to ensure that their means and methods in use-of-force operations comply with the laws of war, but it does not change their "battlefield status" under the laws of war. In other words, the particulars of their...
20.10.11 | |

12 Dec

...person should be held (as was done over and over in the First Gulf War) and their status, rather than the kind of blanket fiat approach of the Presidential terribly erroneous February 7, 2002 order. For persons captured away from the battlefield or in countries in which we are not in conflict, it is possible that Cole is seeing a possibility of them being detained and held upon some basis that can stand up for review by a court. Those persons are being assimilated to security detainees in an occupied...
12.12.08 | |

03 Oct

...Afghanistan, could the Taliban permissibly attack the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan or Central Command headquarters in Florida (from the perspective of IHL, not domestic criminal law)? To take that example further...if so, and if the Taliban elements exercising command and control of those attacks happened to be in a quiet neighborhood in Karachi, could the U.S. not counter those attacks with an armed attack against the command group operating beyond the battlefields of Afghanistan so long as its actions were consistent with IHL? In other words, why can't the...
03.10.11 | |

05 Sep

...I coming into force) included a statement of this rule as binding on US forces. The position of DOD has been since that time that this is a binding rule of custom, and the fact that the United States rejected Additional Protocol I has never detracted from this position. It might be fair to point out the challenge of application of this rule in the context of the contemporary battlefield, and that contrary to the term used to characterize the rule, the exact language prohibits "excessive", and not "disprapportionate" collateral...
05.09.06 | |

25 Jun

Jessica Dorsey Though I can't say I was in agreement with it, Mike's TJIL article The Boundaries of the Battlefield (http://www.tilj.org/content/journal/47/num2/Lewis293.pdf) was one of the earliest pieces that led me to start my own research in the fields of IHL and counterterrorism. We organized a homonymous conference in 2013, http://www.asser.nl/about-the-institute/events/?id=733, at which we had the pleasure of welcoming Mike in The Hague as one of our high-level speakers. His easy mannerisms and sharp analysis during the panels and discussions enriched our event greatly, and we had hoped to invite Mike...
25.06.15 | |

03 May

Benjamin Davis Great stuff Mary Ellen! The battlefield discussion is a big one. Here is my take over at Jurist. http://jurist.org/forum/2011/05/benjamin-davis-post-osama.php Best, Ben Kumahito Respectfully, Professor O'Connell, I don't believe this operation followed a law enforcement model. If the press is to be believed, the Navy SEALs were the ones pulling the triggers. Either the Air Force or the CIA had a UAV overhead providing a live feed to the Situation Room. The SEALs didn't show up with a warrant or any judicial writ. I doubt they knocked and announced...
03.05.11 | |

26 May

...entitled to … battlefield immunity. But C.I.A. drone operators also wear no uniforms. [snip] [T]he Obama administration legal team confronted the issue [of the legality of CIA involvement] as the Pentagon prepared to restart military commission trials at Guantánamo Bay. The commissions began with pretrial hearings in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee accused of killing an Army sergeant during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, when Mr. Khadr was 15. The Pentagon delayed issuing a 281-page manual laying out commission rules until the eve of the hearing....
26.05.10 | |