Terminators

Tripoli, March 27, 2020. Libyan armed forces deploy STM Kargu-2 weapons systems to hunt down people suspected of working with the militia of General Khalifa Haftar, the leading rebel commander in the country’s long-running civil war. Kargu-2 is a Turkish-made helicopter with four rotors—and filled with explosives.

And it’s a robot—or, as militaries call it, an autonomous weapons system. The operation was the first known case of so-called “killer robots” being sent out to track, target, and kill human beings. A UN report found they’d been “programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition.”

Since then, military and paramilitary forces have used various autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems in conflicts in Ukraine, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Gaza. And now there’s a campaign to restrict their use. The UN General Assembly has tried to ban them. The EU has endorsed a ban but hasn’t enacted anything. China has called for a treaty prohibiting their use—though not their production, which Beijing is ramping up, in order to compete with the United States. Meanwhile, European weapons manufacturers say they’re “not far off” from producing drones that can select and hit targets entirely on their own. 

The main rationale for outlawing these systems is that they represent an exceptional threat to civilians in combat zones. UN Secretary-General António Guterres says they’re “morally repugnant and politically unacceptable.” At the same time, several governments are looking to produce or buy more of them, saying they’re necessary for war in the 21st century.

So what civilian risks do these weapons really entail?

Lucy Suchman is a professor emerita at Lancaster University. Suchman says this is just the beginning for killer robots. The systems now in use are basically early prototypes, but they’ve been potent all the same. And while most combat robots are still remotely controlled by humans, in the near future more and more of them will be able to fight and kill on their own. 

It’s a new arms race, Suchman says. Militaries are rushing to buy the best new weapons systems. Which might prove very effective: They could potentially outgun even the best-trained and -equipped human soldier. But a big problem is that they shoot whatever they’ve been trained to shoot. And that’s one thing when it comes to obvious military targets, like tanks, but entirely another when it comes to people in crowded urban scenes …

Gustav Jönsson: What exactly are these “killer robots”?