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Search: battlefield robots

21 May

...by Pakistan itself, not by third parties, and so far it has implicitly acquiesced. Therefore, the statement only deals with the justification for targeting Bin Laden with lethal military force in the specific location where he was found. On 9/18/01 when the AUMF was passed, the Taliban controlled 90% of the area of Afghanistan, represented the only functioning government, and had an army of 45,000 soldiers engaged in a conventional battlefield against insurgents (the Northern Alliance). One can argue that this armed conflict started as an IAC. If so, I...
21.05.11 | |

19 Mar

[Maziar Homayounnejad is currently a PhD researcher at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. His research primarily focuses on law of armed conflict aspects of autonomous weapon systems, with a secondary focus on arms control and non-proliferation.] On January 5th of this year, a Russian air base and a nearby naval base were attacked by a swarm of 13 makeshift drones carrying explosives. This was the first known swarm attack to take place in a real battlefield and, fortunately for Russian forces, it failed: according to the...
19.03.18 | |

26 Aug

...of armed conflict to a traditional battlefield such as Afghanistan is a far cry from asserting that the US's actions away from the battlefield e.g., Yemen should also be subject to the law of armed conflict on the basis that the US government sees it all as the same global war on terror. Kevin Jon Heller Ed, Milan offered precisely the response that I would have. It's not that the US has never implied that it believes IHL applies anywhere it might use military force against Al Qaeda, but this...
26.08.10 | |

24 Mar

...operations people on down hanging out there exposed. The drone warfare campaign embraced most thoroughly as a strategic matter – correctly, in my view – by the senior administration officials starting with the President is not the “hot battlefield” use of drones, in which they are essentially a substitute air support weapon for a manned system. It is, instead, the use of drones in a role unique to them, as a targeted killing mechanism for use in places far off of active battlefields. There are some questions raised about military...
24.03.10 | |

18 May

...it should be subject to derogation during armed conflict. There is much Supreme Court precedent supporting the abridgment of private property rights during war. Milligan suggests that certain circumstances might permit abrogation of even more than property rights. Military necessity for intelligence does not stop with battlefield interrogation. Thus, I am not sure the extent to which we can draw clear lines for the temporal (to capture) or proximal (to the battlefield) applicability of the Fifth Amendment during an armed conflict, assuming it applies at all. What if a simple...
18.05.09 | |

08 Jan

...world.” For you law-of-armed-conflict fans, looks like Judge Bates was particularly interested in where the petitioners were initially captured; most claim they were no where near Afghanistan much less an Afghan battlefield when taken into custody. (Petitioner Redha al-Najar, for example, has witnesses who say he was in his home in Karachi, Pakistan when taken.) While the issue looks like it arose at the 3.5-hour hearing in discussions of Kennedy’s practical-obstacles test (it’s not like the military would have to pull witnesses off the battlefield to testify since these guys...
08.01.09 | |

22 Apr

...the population. There are two things working against this acceptance of drones as a positive addition to the battlefield. One is quite simply the Terminator-like creepiness of machines making war against men that many people have commented upon in discussing drones. The other is the perception that drones, because they are remotely controlled, are less accurate than manned aircraft. The opponents of drone use in Pakistan and Yemen, whose legal complaint was mainly about whether the legal threshold of armed conflict had been crossed or whether the boundaries of the...
22.04.11 | |

23 Oct

...reading rights might make sense is years and miles removed from any actual battlefield, or if the simple reading of rights is all that stands in the way of welcoming a detainee to a lifetime of lawful imprisonment (after successful conviction in federal criminal court) rather than sending him off to Saudi Arabia for “rehabilitation.” To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that I think soldiers, for example, are somehow required to read combatant detainees Miranda warnings. Just the opposite: current law on Miranda warnings recognizes an exigency...
23.10.09 | |

16 Jan

...on the battlefield, even where the detainees themselves were captured elsewhere. Our federal courts require a chain of custody to be presented for all evidence introduced at trial, and this could pose a great deal of difficulty for our forces. Ultimately, we think we are not legally obligated to try al Qaida combatants under the laws of war, but have set up military commissions to prosecute those who have committed the most serious violations of the laws of war. Eric Posner invites me to say what is as stake in...
16.01.07 | |

27 Oct

Charles Gittings I have no idea what recrystallized hexogene is, but it sure sounds nasty. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDX Kenneth Anderson This is so way cool! I'm thinking about putting on a very small conference - reallly a sort of experts discussion - on battlefield robots in the spring. Ill keep everyone posted. Chris Borgen Thanks, Charly! That link gave me memories of high school chemistry, albeit of a more explosive kind!...
27.10.08 | |

07 Sep

I have no desire to have the final word with Ken. But I would like answers to two questions. First, where does Melzer or the ICRC say that armed conflict is a geographically-bounded concept, such that a participant in an armed conflict ceases to be targetable as soon as he leaves the battlefield? I cited pages in Melzer’s book on targeted killing that indicate otherwise, but instead of addressing my counter-argument, Ken simply reiterated his initial claim. No cites, no quotes, no links, nothing. Second, if we assume — as...
07.09.10 | |

07 Feb

...civilian death, injury, or suffering. As a legal expert with the ICRC avers, part of a nuanced contextual inquiry should involve consideration of "the actual level of control exercised over the situation by the operating State" and an appropriate consideration of "required intensity or urgency may" actually involve "a generous standard of ‘reasonableness’ in traditional battlefield confrontations." John C. Dehn I agree with unknown's comment and the gist of Bobby's argument (though I might quibble with particulars regarding the battlefield status of various rescuers/mourners). If the target or object of...
07.02.12 | |