Gwendelynn Bills
83 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 176
Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (“LAWS”) are robots used to deliver
lethal force that possess near-human decision making abilities. Although
LAWS do not yet exist, recent military advancements have laid the foundation
for the development of autonomous weapons technology. Current weapons,
such as the United Kingdom’s Taranis or the United States’s X-47B, are capable
of choosing their own routes, identifying their own targets, and determining
to use lethal force. Fully autonomous LAWS, on the other hand, have no
human involvement when decisions are made. This autonomy provides a
number of military advantages including: lack of types of human emotions
that lead to war crimes, the ability to process greater amounts of information
better than a human, and the preservation of fiscal and human resources. The
international community is demanding action to regulate this entirely new type
of weapon.
The international law governing weapons currently limits weapons in two
different ways. First a weapon that either causes unnecessary injury or is unable
to make a distinction between civilian and military targets is considered per se unlawful.
The current state of LAWS technology provides insufficient
data upon which to determine if LAWS will violate either prohibition. The
second limitation on weapons prohibits individual uses of a weapon that fail
to make a distinction between civilian and military targets, and uses that are
not proportional to the military necessity of the attack. It is not clear, however,
that these rules apply to all of the states that are currently developing
LAWS. Additionally, it is unclear who would be held responsible if a LAWS
did violate international weapons law. These areas of uncertainty require a
multilateral treaty to be sufficiently addressed.
This Note proposes a multilateral treaty that aims to regulate the development
and use of LAWS. The treaty must include articles on distinction and
proportionality, as well as an article that creates avenues for holding multiple
actors accountability for the unlawful actions of LAWS. Draft language for
each of these articles has been provided. The treaty should also create a body
capable of monitoring compliance with the LAWS convention based on the
Universal Periodic Review conducted by the Human Rights Council, or, alternatively,
modeled after the Chemical Weapons Convention.
