Autonomous Unmanned Systems and Impacts to Moral Decision-Making in Future Warfare

Technological advance continually offers new weapons and resources for combat operations. Subsequently, each technological advance necessitates of review of the current just war theory to ensure the current framework can handle the new technology and that combat is conducted in a manner that complies with the framework. One foreseeable advance in technology that will impact the current just war theory framework is the introduction of autonomous unmanned combat systems. Current human-controlled unmanned system success on the battlefield coupled with rapidly advancing processor technology will fuel the move to increasingly sophisticated autonomous combat vehicles. Additionally, the US Department of Defense has already pledged a several billion dollar investment to advance the research and development necessary to field these systems. This work will examine the rate of change of military technology throughout the centuries to highlight today's rapid development. It will then evaluate the current just war theory framework to see if autonomous weapons systems can comply with the existing framework and suggest areas for further study. The paper will then evaluate the current employment of unmanned systems and the feasibility of truly autonomous weapon systems in combat.