Search: battlefield robots
24 Mar Weekly News Wrap: Tuesday, March 24, 2015
...military experts to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. The United States and its allies targeted Islamic State in nine air strikes in Iraq and Syria in the latest round of daily attacks on the militants, the Combined Joint Task Force said on Sunday. Praised as a model of Arab Spring progress, Tunisia has finally been drawn onto the global jihadi battlefield after Islamist militants gunned down foreign tourists in a brazen assault at the heart of the capital. The Lebanese military is struggling to...
20 Nov Australian Special Forces War Crimes Prosecutions: Crucial but Just One Aspect When It Comes to Respect for the Laws of War
...battlefield itself. It is in the training pre-deployment, in the policies embedded, and ultimately, in the culture of the armed forces – but also of the nation those forces represent. There are many measures that governments can, and do, take to respect and ensure respect for the laws of war. Many of the actions required to be undertaken by countries to respect the law are set out in law itself. These including ensuring the women and men who serve know the laws and are well trained in them. However, the...02 Dec Upcoming Events: December 2, 2012
Upcoming Events The next session of the Joint International Humanitarian Law Forum takes place on December 5, 2012 at the IDC Radzyner School of Law. Dr. Ben Clarke will discuss his new article “Beyond the Call of Duty: Integration of International Humanitarian Law in Video Games and Battlefield Training Simulators”. More information can be found here. Calls for Papers The International Community Law Review has issued a call for papers for a special issue of its 2013 volume, to be edited by Professor Duncan French (University of Lincoln) and Dr....02 Feb Weekend Roundup: January 26 – February 1, 2013
This week on Opinio Juris, Julian kicked off on a lighter note with a Chinese cartoon on the maritime dispute between China and the Philippines. IHL and ICL lawyers were well catered for throughout the week, starting with a guest post by Michael W. Lewis, who discussed two more issues raised at the Boundaries of the Battlefield symposium: “elongated imminence” in response to an armed attack and the lack of operational experience of those writing on international humanitarian law. Kevin later took issue with the suggestion that Israel’s Six Day...01 Oct The Folly of Comparing Al-Awlaki to Admiral Yamamoto (Updated)
It appears the right-wing has settled on a shiny new historical comparison to justify the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. Here is Jack Goldsmith in the New York Times: An attack on an enemy soldier during war is not an assassination. During World War II, the United States targeted and killed Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And here is John Tobin in the American Spectator: Anwar al-Awlaki was actively recruiting terrorists to attack the U.S. He was, in effect, a battlefield commander, and...13 Feb What a Difference an Historical Narrative Makes
...could use to advance pacification and Vietnamization. Partially offsetting these gains were the allies’ own need to extend their forces over a new battlefield and the political damage the Nixon administration had suffered in the United States. Nevertheless, the advantages appeared to American officials in Saigon and Washington to outweigh the disadvantages. As 1970 ended, they were making plans for additional, even more ambitious, cross-border offensives. And now the Australian narrative, produced by the Australian War Memorial: At the end of April 1970 US and South Vietnamese troops were ordered...
14 Feb Justice Prevails over Realpolitik at Koblenz: International Law offers a Rare Glimmer of Hope after a Decade of Disappointments for Syrians
...this regard, it serves as a timely reminder that the Assad regime cannot be readmitted into the international community simply because it prevailed on the battlefield with the help of its allies, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. On the contrary, it should be held accountable for the atrocities that enabled its military triumph. This symbolism is important in light of recent moves by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt to reintegrate the Assad regime into the Arab world (see here, here and here). Even the US recently...
18 Jul Symposium on PMSCs: Playing Regulatory Catch-up – PM(S)Cs and the New Draft Instrument
...to ease the pressure on the monopoly on the use of force and, subsequently, sovereignty. This is, unfortunately, highly unlikely as previously discussed and stated by key host states of PMCs. Sisyphean Task All in all, PMSCs and their patrons have the distinct advantage of being already established. At present, PMSCs seem to be a permanent fixture, making regaining sole state authority on all outsourced services unrealistic. Regulators have to fight against the status quo of quasi-unlimited freedom in the use of PMCs in and around the battlefield, a steep...
30 Apr Soldier Self-Defense Symposium: Individual Self-Defense in Armed Conflict – a US Perspective
...of self-defense would likely succeed in scenario two, but fail in scenario three. While this is a technical argument that would have little significance in an actual criminal case, it is important to note because it illustrates why individual self-defense on the battlefield is a limited authority. It will generally apply in only two situations – against someone trying to harm a person for motives not connected to the ongoing armed conflict or in non-international armed conflicts against members of organized armed groups or civilians taking a direct part in...12 Jul Ken Anderson on The Hamdan Buzz
...artificial distinction that simply does not exist on the battlefield. Analytically, on the one hand, far from a civil war between a government and nonstate actors within the territory of a state, the Afghanistan war is the invasion of the territory of a state by another state – the cuts against calling it an armed conflict “not of an international character.” On the other hand, if you conceive of the war against Al Qaeda as a conflict separate from the conflict against Afghanistan, then because Al Qaeda is a nonstate...