NAVAL DRONES

by Kenneth Stewart, NPS, kastewar(at) nps.edu  Students and faculty from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) recently came together with teams of junior officers from U.S. Navy Third Fleet to discuss the ethics of unmanned systems for the 2015 iteration of the Robo-Ethics Continuing Education Series. This year’s event was led via video teleconference by NPS Associate Professor Ray Buettner, April 14. “We are interested in exploring the ethical boundaries of robotic systems … preparing tools to figure out what the future will be like,” said Buettner. But as student and faculty researchers wade into the at-times turbulent waters of unmanned systems, they are also exploring the many ethical considerations that autonomous combat systems present. “Should a machine be able to decide to kill, and if so, what does ‘decide’ mean?” Buettner asked assembled students and others joining via video teleconference from USNA and elsewhere. “The key concept t...

Guest post written for UUV Week by Sean Walsh. Should robots sink ships with people on them in time of war? Will it be normatively acceptable and technically possible for robotic submarines to replace crewed submarines? These debates are well-worn in the UAV space. Ron Arkin’s classic work  Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots  has generated considerable attention since it was published six years ago in 2009. The centre of his work is the “ethical governor” that would give normative approval to lethal decisions to engage enemy targets. He claims that International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and Rules of Engagement can be programmed into robots in machine readable language. He illustrates his work with a prototype that engages in several test cases. The drone does not bomb the Taliban because they are in a cemetery and targeting “cultural property” is forbidden. The drone selects an “alternative release point” (i.e. it waits for the tank to move a certain distance)...

It’s not often that a book review coincides with current events. Books, particularly nonfiction, are usually written and published months, if not years after an event has occurred. That’s because good nonfiction is written in retrospect: writers have spent some time absorbing their subject, researching and analyzing the facts; authors are hesitant to be rash in judgment or thought. However, there are exceptions. Some pieces of nonfiction, particularly journalists’ works, are appropriate now — not later. Andrew Cockburn’s new book,  Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins , is one of them.  Cockburn’s book is timely.  In just the past few weeks there has been a flood of  reporting from media outlets  stating  that a drone strike killed an American and an Italian hostage when targeting a group of Al-Qaeda members operating near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, questions about drone strikes, the debate about targeted killing, and th...

by CAPT (ret) Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., USN, Professor of Practice, NPS, whughes(at)nps.edu Read Part I Here TACTICS AND TECHNOLOGIES In November 2010 the Naval Institute published its robotics essay contest winner, “ How to Fight an Unmanned War ,” by Lieutenant James E. Drennan, a student in the Systems Engineering Analysis curriculum at the Naval Postgraduate School. It is a brilliant piece, not least because it is oriented around tactics. Drennan answers the who, where, when, how, and why questions of combat that incorporates robots. A runner up in the competition is on the Naval Institute web site: “ Our Own Worst Enemy: Institutional Inertia and the Internal Challenges of Embracing Robotics ” by a former Marine, Nathan Hughes (no relation). He contends that the greatest resistance to the development and deployment of robotic systems is neither in the research and development community nor outside the Department of Defense. It is systemic within DoD, created by “a ro...

By Alex Calvo The World Economic Forum in Davos is always a good source of headlines. This year, media interest went beyond financial and economic issues, extending to the ultimate impact of robots on the future of humankind. In a five-member panel , Stuart Russell, a world leading expert on AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics, predicted that AI would overtake humans “ within my children's lifetime ”, adding that it was imperative to ensure that computers kept serving human needs, rather than being instead a threat to our species. In order to do so, Professor Russell believes that it is necessary to guarantee that robots have the same values as we humans. Assuming that AI and robotics will keep progressing, and there is no reason to doubt they will, it is clear that sooner or later we will face the prospect of machines which are more intelligent than their creators. Furthermore, this may also result in they being self-aware. Once they enjoy this dual characteristic ...

by CAPT (ret) Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., USN, Professor of Practice, NPS, whughes(at)nps.edu  "We may be on the leading edge of a new age of tactics. Call it the “age of robotics.” Unpeopled air, surface, and subsurface vehicles have a brilliant, if disconcerting, future in warfare.” Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, 1999  On 14 December I listened to a lecture by Professor George Lucas entitled “Military Technologies and the Resort to War.” This was for three reasons. First, I respect him as a distinguished expert on military ethics. Second, at NPS we have extensive research in air, surface, and subsurface unmanned vehicles. At the behest of the Secretary of the Navy the many components were recently consolidated in a center acronymed CRUSER [1]  in which the ethics of robotic warfare is included explicitly. Third, a decade ago I addressed the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on Just War. [ 2] For reasons that will become apparent, Just War Doctrine is inad...