In a comprehensive 112-page report the British Ministry of Defence has questioned the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and its impact on human beings. In Chapter V on “Moral, legal and ethical issues”, the report mentions the possibility of armed robots taking over from human beings in a war situation, making war lot more dangerous.

The report titled “The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems” has questioned: will future wars be fought remotely, at least initially, with little or no loss of friendly human life? Is human nature such that the next arms race will seek to pitch increasingly complex unmanned systems against other unmanned systems or humans?

The first area for consideration involves the removal of risk to ones own forces in warfare. This raises a number of interesting areas for debate, not the least being the school of thought that suggests that for war to be moral (as opposed to just legal) it must link the killing of enemies with an element of self-sacrifice, or at least risk to oneself. This raises two interesting issues.

Firstly, does it follow that the ability to use unmanned systems, without risk to an operator’s life, will lead to the rapid escalation of what would previously have been considered a simple diplomatic problem, to full-on technological warfare?

It is essential that, before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) that we consider this issue and ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, that we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely. For example, the recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new era. That these activities are exclusively carried out by unmanned aircraft, even though very capable manned aircraft are available and that the use of ground troops in harm’s way has been avoided, suggests that the use of force is totally a function of the existence of an unmanned capability – it is unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were not available.

The second area for consideration is that use, by the western nations, of high technology unmanned platforms, offering no risk to their own personnel, may directly impact on the apparent legitimacy of their actions. While notions of fairness are not necessarily appropriate in war, the UK, as a democratic nation ‘cannot achieve long-term security and prosperity unless we uphold our values’. We must consider the war of ideas inherent in all modern warfare, particularly counter-insurgency operations. Robots cannot be emotive, cannot hate. A target is a series of ones and zeros, and once the decision is made, by whatever means, that the target is legitimate, then prosecution of that target is made mechanically. The robot does not care that the target is human or inanimate, terrorist or freedom fighter, savage or barbarian. A robot cannot be driven by anger to carry out illegal actions such as those at My Lai.

The pace of technological development is accelerating and the UK must establish quickly a clear policy on what will constitute acceptable machine behaviour in future; there is already a significant body of scientific opinion that believes in banning autonomous weapons outright. There is a danger that time is running out—is debate and development of policy even still possible, or is the technological genie already out of the ethical bottle, embarking us all on an incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality?