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Search: battlefield robots

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 | |

17 Jun

...taken away from them. John Fabian Witt has also written a great article on this topic addressing U.S. practice. The other significant issue that various colleagues have shared with me is that identifying "innocent victims" on the battlefield can be exceptionally difficult. One might inadvertantly fund an insurgency if not careful when identifying who is to be compensated. There is often room for debate between NGOs and governments regarding whether a given individual is truly an "inccoent victim" and should be compensated. Chris Jenks Scott Sorry, in re-reading my comments...
17.06.10 | |

28 Sep

...to join a foreign enemy army and because you personally don't trust the executive does not answer any of the million very hard questions that must be addressed to turn your discomfort into an actual process. Nescio @ Howard Gilbert Of course, the crux of this situation is that you start from the premise that being accused is equal to being guilty. My question: how do we know a certain individual "is an enemy soldier (or combatant)?" Especially when that individual is not present on any battlefield, and curiously not...
28.09.10 | |