Charting great power progress toward a lethal autonomous weapon system demonstration point

ABSTRACT

The emergence of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) offers a comparatively low adoption-cost strategy to emerging great powers that would allow them to offset the conventional military advantage enjoyed by their rivals, which threatens the established global balance of power. This article critically analyses the role of China and the United States in the development of the “hardware” and “software” components of LAWS, concluding that, while the demonstration point has not yet been reached, the incubation of this emerging revolution in military affairs has already begun to have a geopolitical impact.

KEYWORDS:

• Lethal autonomous weapon systems
• LAWS
• autonomous military technology
• diffusion
• revolution in military affairs
• hegemonic conflict
• hardware
• software

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Artificial intelligence can be described as “the use of computing power, in the form of algorithms, to conduct tasks that previously required human intelligence” (Horowitz 2019).

2. Directive 3000.09 was referred to in a range of US DoD affiliated sources in the past year, including the 2019 Congressional Research Paper “Artificial Intelligence and National Security”, the Summary of the 2018 Department of Defense Artificial Intelligence Strategy (Department of Defense, D. O 2019).

3. “A weapon system that, based on conclusions derived from gathered information and preprogrammed constraints, is capable of independently selecting and engaging targets” – Crootof, R. quoted in (Horowitz 2016b). Why Words Matter: The Real World Consequences of Defining Autonomous Weapons Systems. Temp. Int’l & Comp. LJ, 30, 85.

4. “A fully autonomous Lethal Autonomous Weapon System (LAWS) is a weapon delivery platform that is able to independently analyse its environment and make an active decision whether to fire without human supervision or guidance” (Wyatt and Galliott 2018).

5. Rosen defines a Major Innovation as “a change that forces one of the primary combat arms of service to change its concepts of operation and its relation to other combat arms, and to abandon or downgrade traditional missions” … “new operational procedures conforming to those ideas.” – Rosen 1988.

6. An innovation must change “the manner in which military formations function in the field” in a manner that is “significant in scope and impact” and leads to greater military effectiveness – Grissom 2006.

7. Major Military Innovations are “major changes in the conduct of warfare, relevant to leading military organizations, designed to increase the efficiency with which capabilities are converted to power.” – Horowitz 2010.

8. It was confirmed to the author by a former Australian Army officer that the Saab Giraffe AMB is capable of detecting projectiles as small as a 7.62-mm rifle round.

9. Dr. Elsa Kania’s recent testimony (2019) to the congressional United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission contains a highly detailed review of Chinese military-civil fusion projects.

10. Interestingly, following this initial opt-in, players would encounter AlphaStar opponents anonymously through the normal matchmaking process. Obscuring their identity from players was intended to ensure that the AI agents were able to train in “realistic” game conditions.

11. This study is no longer publicly accessible, a public citation of the study can be found in (Krishnan 2009). Automating War: The Need for Regulation. Contemporary Security Policy, 30, 172–193.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship, Australian Government;Australia Department of Education and Training [Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship];