Pros And Cons Of The Lethal Autonomous Weapons System

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The third Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) annual meeting of informal group of experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons System (LAWS) took place from April 11-15, 2016. A series of dialogues was held with regards to the challenges of international law, and ethical dilemmas of the deployment of LAWS, hopefully leading to a proper consensual recommendation to the fifth Review Conference on 16 December. In actuality, it’s not the first debate on the deployment of LAWS.
In 2002, Human Rights Watch released a report, “Losing Humanity: The Case against Killer Robots,” denying the legality of LAWS and advocating the all-out ban on the future development of LAWS. Two days later, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) published the Directive 3000.09, suggesting …show more content…

However, these weapons are not what we are talking about here. The autonomous weapons system (AWS) is, as the U.S. DoD defines, a weapon system that, once activated, is intended to select and engage targets on its own. Unlike the former automated weapons systems which mostly are remotely interfered by human operators “in the loop” (human controlled) or “on the loop” (human supervised), AWS doesn’t rely on any human intervention to lauch attacks. Although this kind of high-tech doesn’t exist in any practicable form at this point, technological innovations in weaponry development must render it possible in …show more content…

Accoring to the Article 51 and 57, Protocol I, the attack shall not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Not only is LAWS difficult to avoid disproportionate killings, but also the principle of military necessity further add the legal complexity. Military necessity, suggested in the IHL, justifies those measures not forbidden by international law, which may trigger adverse repercussions toward the civilians and properties. It remains legal to make acceptable collateral damage under the circumstances of military necessity. Nevertheless, according to Article 35(2), Protocol I, it’s prohibited to employ weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. The use of lethal force proves lawful, but only the means and methods of warfare are necessary to accomplish the military advantage. Plus, Article 41(2) protects a person who “expresses an intention to surrender,” or “has been rendered unconscious or otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness.” An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report explains, “if a combatant can be put out of action by taking him prison, he should not be injured; if he can be put out of action by injury, he should not be killed.” In addition, NATO’s Policy on Non-Lethal