Killer Drones

NORMALLY, drones are “driven” remotely by pilots, and the decision to attack or kill is always made by a human being. But the expense of highly trained combat pilots could tempt military leaders to switch to cheaper autonomous weapons. In fact, it’s already happening. In 2020, the interim Libyan government launched an autonomous Turkish Kargu-2 drone that attacked retreating rebel soldiers in the African country, according to a UN report.

The lethal autonomous system was programmed to act of its own accord “without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true ‘fire, forget and find’ capability,” the report said.

“From a warfare perspective, autonomous drones provide an attractive proposition,” said robotics expert, UK professor Kevin Warwick. “Low intelligence, low tech, low cost but high payload autonomous drones are perhaps the most popular at the moment.”

In 2017, technology leaders including Elon Musk wrote to the UN calling for autonomous weapons to be banned in the same way chemical weapons are today. Musk dubbed them a “Pandora’s box,” marking a “third revolution” in warfare after gunpowder and nuclear weapons.

“Once developed, lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend,” Musk and his fellow authors warned.

But international agreements to limit their use will be difficult to enforce, Warwick said.

“We could possibly be looking at a network of AI drones with very different tasks,” he said. “Each individual drone might be relatively simple/stupid, but when networked together the overall system is an extremely powerful military machine.”