Killing from a distance, a goal which mankind has reached for since the stone age. This has been and continues to be the deciding factor in military dominance. But, can we go too far, is it possible to take this to such an extreme as to make human soldiers irrelevant? Even if we can go that far, should we? These are the questions we face in the 21st Century.
As a military force, the United States has had ‘fire and forget weapons’ since the late 1950’s. These weapons have been able to detect and track a target without additional input from the firing unit since their inception. But, they have always had a weakness, or a control, they had to be fired by a human hand. Until now, we have never had the technology that combines lightning fast decision making, mobility, and lethality. Now that we do, the question we must ask is ‘should we’. It is at this stage of the question that we must ask ourselves the following: ‘What defines a completely autonomous weapon system?’. The answer that this paper will use is the following ‘a completely autonomous weapon system …show more content…
But, realistically, just like those systems, can it be stopped? Can we honestly look at history and say ‘if we had just stopped work on the nuclear bomb, they would not exist and the world would be a better place’? In truth, no, because multiple countries and scientists were all working on the same technology. In many ways, military technology advances contrary to what humans, soldiers, and scientists wish for because the cost of being second place in the arms race is too great to contemplate. And so, the ultimate statement for this paper is not about what we wish would happen, but what should realistically be done about this system. Ultimately the Geneva Conventions and the USMCOJ both have guidelines that outline the use of any weapon
As a military force, the United States has had ‘fire and forget weapons’ since the late 1950’s. These weapons have been able to detect and track a target without additional input from the firing unit since their inception. But, they have always had a weakness, or a control, they had to be fired by a human hand. Until now, we have never had the technology that combines lightning fast decision making, mobility, and lethality. Now that we do, the question we must ask is ‘should we’. It is at this stage of the question that we must ask ourselves the following: ‘What defines a completely autonomous weapon system?’. The answer that this paper will use is the following ‘a completely autonomous weapon system …show more content…
But, realistically, just like those systems, can it be stopped? Can we honestly look at history and say ‘if we had just stopped work on the nuclear bomb, they would not exist and the world would be a better place’? In truth, no, because multiple countries and scientists were all working on the same technology. In many ways, military technology advances contrary to what humans, soldiers, and scientists wish for because the cost of being second place in the arms race is too great to contemplate. And so, the ultimate statement for this paper is not about what we wish would happen, but what should realistically be done about this system. Ultimately the Geneva Conventions and the USMCOJ both have guidelines that outline the use of any weapon