The Ethical Dilemma of Autonomous Weapons Systems in Combat
The progress of technologies is characterized by exponential growth, and hence, the future of war slowly begins to look like a storyline from any science fiction novel. This technology is already being progressively introduced into battle and raises a whole host of new ethical issues. Amongst the more controversial technology developments in modern warfare, the combat use of an AWS or machines capable of independently selecting and engaging targets has been amongst the ones that are most discussed. What was once the figment of science fiction is now turning into a not-so-distant possibility, bringing with it a host of concerns about the ethical implications of decision-making being passed on to machines. Even as AWS is being hailed for revolutionizing warfare to rise to unprecedented accuracy while minimizing the loss of human lives, their deployment will bring with them burning controversies regarding moral acceptance, rationality, and consequentialist assessment of war (Igbohor, 2024). This essay will establish that while the integration of AWS can make them more effective and reduce casualties, their deployment poses significant ethical and moral concerns, particularly in terms of decision-making and accountability, thereby leaving less human warfare.
One of the main ethical concerns with reference to AWS is that this technology removes human responsibility in war. In the existing laws of armed conflict, man is held accountable for choices he makes in a belief that the use of force can remain moral and legal. In AWS, the foggy line of accountability created hampers effective solutions. For instance, according to Human Rights Watch key professionals interviewed for the annual report from 2020, there is no clarity regarding accountability in the field for deployment other than human control (HRW, 2020). Take for instance whether an autonomous system mistakenly targets civilians: Whose failure is it: the commander who signed for the use of the weapon, the engineers who designed it into the computer, or the computer itself? These characterizations disrupt the legal norms regarding warfare, create loopholes in submission procedures, and do not allow assigning responsibility for unlawful actions. The net effect is that AWS erodes accountability in warfare and makes it difficult to ensure that accountability is achieved for rule violations.
Furthermore, the presence of uncertainty in the decision-making process with AWS introduces further ethical issues with their deployment. Autonomous but grounded artificially intelligent systems are in use in AWS for decision-making with algorithms for data processing and decision making. There are often many negative outcomes that might ensue if algorithms fail to operate as expected in reading contexts. An example of this sort of threat was a horrible incident that occurred in 2020 with the Turkish Kargu-2 drone that while conducting an autonomous attack on human targets without permission killed people (Zitser, 2021). This underscores the eerie realism of the possibility for AWS to take an action that would potentially harm people who are wholly unrelated to any conflict. Whereas the human soldier is capable of coming up with various assessments given different scenarios and also adjusting to situations in the dynamically changing battlefields, AWS lacks such qualities. This would be unable to consider moral inputs or use ethical reasoning as a human does whereby the chances of attaining avoidable loss and suffering rise a notch higher. The sometimes inherently unpredictable nature of the AWS decision-making process itself presents an alarming risk insofar as these systems are poorly fitted to handle the complexities and moral challenges that have defined the human experience of war.
In addition to this, the deployment of AWS has very serious implications for eroding human responsibility in warfare, with the growing lethal decision-making by machines. Human soldiers would show moral responsibility for their actions, having made choices with an awareness of the ethical consequences of an act of combat. AWS, on the other hand, disengages acts of killing from human judgment and therefore erodes accountability in military conduction. One 2022 study published in the Journal of Military Ethics estimated that drones and automated systems desensitize soldiers to killing (Johnson, 2022). In further taking humans out of the decision-making process, AWS exacerbates such desensitization and thereby contributes to the dehumanization of warfare. Mechanization risks making lethal decisions and routine calculations devoid of moral gravity. In this way, warfare could become an increasingly brutal and ethically dubious practice, as soldiers are further removed from the physical and emotional consequences of their actions, fundamentally undermining the honor and duty that define military service.
However, AWS proponents argue that these technologies help reduce human risk by keeping soldiers out of harm's way in combat zones while increasing efficiency overall.
Supporters say that AWS can make more precise decisions compared to human beings since
AWS technologies would employ superior sensors and algorithms to minimize collateral damage. According to a recent report published by the RAND Corporation, AWS would reduce civilian casualties and military fatalities because AWS could process information and execute it more rapidly than human capability allows for (RAND, 2022). But this perspective utterly neglects some crucial ethical considerations about abandoning life-or-death decisions to machines. The lesser number of casualties is indeed commendable, but not at the expense of ethical accountability, in which machines lack moral judgment compared to human soldiers. The International Committee of the Red Cross made a point that AWS is incapable of distinguishing through the complex aspects of irregular warfare and mostly fails at distinguishing combatants from civilians. While AWS may do fine in controlled environments, it falls short where human moral reasoning and flexibility are required in real-world circumstances.
While AWS may, therefore, have its tactical advantages, they are also host to significant ethical dilemmas. Removing human accountability and predictability of AI decision-making and mechanizing acts of violence are serious arguments for the future of warfare. While supporters argue that AWS saves human lives and makes the battlefield effective, these benefits are trumped by the ethical risks they pose. In other words, as military technology continues to evolve, it is important that human judgment and oversight remain central in combat decision-making. After all, warfare is far from being only about efficiency and precision but a really moral and ethical venture controlled by human responsibility. While autonomous weapons may finally promise a future of combat with fewer hazards, ethical problems that they create deserve serious reflection and scrutiny before their mass deployment.
