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Search: battlefield robots

02 Mar

...undermining both the capacity and willingness of human operators to act ethically. With LLMs, this problem may well significantly intensify. For the foreseeable future, LLMs should likely be nowhere near a targeting decision loop. While it is laudable that Anthropic has so far held firm in its guardrails, we should expect nothing less for companies that produce AI models that are technically unreliable and have the capacity to produce legally and ethically questionable outcomes on the battlefield. But is this enough or does it merely distract from deeper discussions on...
02.03.26 | , , , and |

19 Sep

...Europe’s strategic attention in recent history, the war in Ukraine is in danger of becoming a secondary concern. In this hour of volatility, it is essential that Western resolve does not waiver. Russia’s Renewed Assault on Ukraine On June 23rd, Russian forces launched drone and missile strikes on Kyiv, claiming at least ten lives and revealing plots to assassinate Zelensky. These developments underscore the Kremlin’s ongoing campaign of destabilization targeting Ukraine’s government and infrastructure. These attacks are not just battlefield maneuvers by Russia, they are strategic escalations designed to erode...
19.09.25 | |

30 Jan

...that: (1) the Scorpions Unit was deployed in Trnovo from late June through at least the end of July 1995; (2) on 1 July 1995, Borovcanin reported on activities on the Trnovo battlefield, including on an attack involving the Scorpions Unit; (3) Borovcanin was in Trnovo on the Sarajevo front until he was resubordinated on 10 July 1995; (4) a mixed company of joint Republic of Serbian Krajina (“RSK”), Serbian and RS MUP forces was among the units under Borovcanin’s command when he was resubordinated and that during the night...
30.01.15 | |

17 Jul

...war. But Mr. Warsame was not picked up on any recognized battlefield. The administration claims continuing authority for military detention, interrogation and trial. This applies not just to battlefield detentions, where it is often appropriate, but to detentions anywhere, and not just to personal involvement in violent attacks, but to a broad range of offenses directly or indirectly related to terrorism. That is far too broad a claim. This paragraph is absolutely correct. The US and al-Qaeda are not engaged in a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) in Somalia, nor is...
17.07.11 | |

05 Apr

...objection that drone strikes away from a battlefield constitute unlawful extrajudicial killing. Not so, Koh replies—a state “that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force.” The suggestion here is that a state that is the subject of sustained threat from an armed group may use lethal force when necessary to defend the lives of its citizens, even outside the context of a recognisable armed conflict. And furthermore that this right of...
05.04.10 | |

21 Jul

...Winston Churchill famously noted during World War II, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” And as recent conflicts have demonstrated, combat effectiveness, let alone battlefield survivability, depends increasingly on technology-driven deception, camouflage, and multispectral concealment. Absent effective countermeasures, in an age of sensor-soaked battlefields and data-centric warfare, forces can be “instantly detected, targeted, and destroyed” by traditional, and now AI-driven sensor systems. As Christian Brose, the Head of Strategy at Anduril Industries noted presciently several years ago: “in a world that...
21.07.26 | |

02 Sep

...may be held accountable for their actions.) Chemical weapons on the other hand are entirely indiscriminate. It is simply not possible, particularly in an urban environment like the suburbs of Damascus, to use them in a way that is by any standard legal. Further, the risk that the Syrian battlefield may turn into one where chemical weapons in a region that is already incredibly unstable from sectarian rivalries, the fallout of the Arab Spring and, yes, the 2003 intervention in Iraq, raises very real security concerns. Is having open chemical...
02.09.13 | |

11 Dec

...“Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots,” the same weekend that the Defense Department issued a DOD Directive, “Autonomy in Weapons Systems.” We’ve talked about the HRW report here at OJ some – it is both a report and a set of recommendations calling for a multilateral treaty that would prohibit the “development, production, and use” of autonomous weapons systems. To judge by its reception in the international NGO community, it seems to be a call for the landmines ban campaign of the 1990s, redux. The DOD Directive, for its...
11.12.12 | |

22 Nov

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and a number of other former U.S. Department of Justice officials filed an amicus brief yesterday in Al-Marri v. Wright, a case currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (see the WPost article here). As a legal argument, the amicus brief offers little that is new or surprising. It argues that the “enemy combatant” designation cannot be used against civilians capture outside the battlefield – this is quite likely to be the next front in the legal war over “enemy...
22.11.06 | |

14 May

...administration. But as we’ve noted, the domestic and international law relevant here is immensely complicated and hardly clear cut. I agree that U.S. citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war. But, as one critic quoted in the article points out, it does protect you from being wiretapped without a warrant or interrogated without your Miranda rights. So isn’t it weird that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t give you due process before you die in a drone attack, away from any conventional battlefield that is launched by an non-privileged combatant?...
14.05.10 | |

26 Jan

...security and counterterrorism, articulated the notion of a global NIAC when he stated “[t]here is nothing in international law that…prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies outside of an active battlefield, at least when the country involved consents or is unable or unwilling to take action against the threat.” When we look at this statement from the perspective of the consenting State rather than from the perspective of the attacking State, two things become obvious. The first is that the attacking State’s claims to IHL targeting authorities are...
26.01.16 | |

20 Jan

...Law of Naval Operations provides that incidental injury or collateral damage must not be “excessive in light of the military advantage anticipated by the attack.” The concept of proportionality appears in somewhat different terms in Articles 51(5)(b) and 57(2)(a)(iii) of Additional Protocol I. Proportionality is at issue not only in battlefield applications, but in the strategic context as well, as reflected in Daniel Webster’s letter to Mr. Fox concerning the Caroline incident (noting that Her Majesty’s Government would have to show that the Canadian authorities did nothing “unreasonable or excessive”?)...
20.01.07 | |