Are we living in the era of killer robots soon?

One of the most prominent critics of modernity, Zygmunt Baumann, believes that the combat technology developed by man at the beginning of the last century made the process of killing easier and lighter on the conscience, when it distanced the direct contact between the killer and the victim.

Amani Al Sinwar

A man with an American flag parachute passes by a drone at an exhibition in China.

The commander of the warplane that bombed residential neighborhoods, can be emotionally isolated from his victims, when he looks at his combat mission from a purely technical angle related to the arts of flying, maneuvering, and playing on a keyboard to launch missiles from a distance. What if these combat aircraft were not worn by a pilot at all? It is not directed by a technician in a military base, but has been pre-programmed to know its targets and bomb them through artificial intelligence techniques?!

Perhaps this scenario, which is very similar to what we see of killer robots in movies, is what worries most critics of the expansion in the use of combat marches, especially for purposes that go beyond the objectives of reconnaissance and information gathering towards the implementation of direct combat missions, and the imminent shift towards independence from human leadership of these marches, to turn Towards self-reliance in flight operations, monitoring, detection and destruction of targets. Which raises questions about the morality of this kind of fighting, and the results it produces on the ground, which makes it of utmost importance to develop global legislation and protocols that regulate it, and establish mechanisms for international monitoring and accountability.

The concerns about operating the drones are not limited to the expansion of combat missions, due to their low financial and human cost, but artificial intelligence techniques may record serious mistakes that lead to the drones losing their target or bombing civilian targets, such mistakes the US Department of Defense has repeatedly admitted in Syria And Afghanistan, the worst of which was a technical error that led to the bombing of a group of Afghan farmers in 2019, killing at least 30 of them.

A United Nations report issued in early 2021 warns that, for the first time, it was suspected that combat drones were carrying out missile strikes in Libya independently of 100% of human orders, that is, relying entirely on artificial intelligence, which works according to pre-programmed data to distinguish face prints to diagnose targets. The report said that these marches carried out chases and bombardment of fighters on the ground in Libya, warning that confidence in such technology is similar to what we see in movies of killer robots chasing people. With their eyes and their explosiveness, they are still fragile in terms of their accuracy and their avoidance of mistakes.

With the multiplicity of parties and countries that got involved in the Libyan war and turned its sky into an exhibition of drones, the United Nations report was unable to hold any party responsible for this incident, and this is another aspect of the danger inherent in the use of drones, as the ability to evade political and moral responsibility for any attacks .

Drone manufacturers are focusing their efforts on developing the capabilities of infiltration, stealth, and misleading the radars and anti-aircraft systems of their fighters, all of which are features that may encourage countries and entities to go to war while mitigating the responsibilities associated with them.

With the low human and material cost compared to other weapons, remote wars using marches become more tempting, which encourages their outbreak and the continuation of confrontations in them, and reduces the tendency to sit at the negotiating table and agree on a ceasefire.

In view of these risks, another set of advantages that combat drones provide should not be overlooked. From a moral point of view as well, they are the most capable of reducing the human cost, not only for the operating party, but for all parties in the battle. Given the low cost of flying, materially and humanly, drones are the most capable. It must fly over danger sites for longer periods to enable it to monitor its targets carefully and to ensure that civilians are neutralized and human and material losses are minimized before any attack is carried out.

The cost of manufacturing drones is the lowest in the air force system, as well as the cost of maintaining and operating them. Notable successes have been recorded in besieging terrorist and separatist groups and organized crime groups that take rugged geography as a base for guerrilla warfare and smuggling operations.

Finally, combat marches, like other types of weapons, need to resort to a set of local and international legislation and laws that control their uses, and enhance the means of control and accountability. In the face of export to countries of the world.

With the presence of rising powers such as Turkey that carved its place in the manufacturers and exporters of this technology, it has become very possible to break this monopoly, which opens the way to rearrange the security balances in a region such as the Middle East, which has always been settled in favor of the United States, Israel and their allies in the region, given the huge gap In the military and security capabilities and the impossibility of restricting them without passing through the gateway to possessing weapons technology.