05 Sep 2007: ISS Today: Robot Warriors Pose Ethical Challenges

05 September 2007: Robot Warriors Pose Ethical Challenges

 

The movie ‘Transformers’ which recently ran in movie theatres around the world is pure Hollywood. In the movie robotic alien warriors – ‘Autobots’ and ‘Decepticons’ - battle it out on earth, trailing destruction in their wake. With dramatic computer-generated effects, an impressive line-up of celebrity voices, the movie contains not the slightest hint of reality. Right? Wrong.

 

While they may not be aliens, and while they certainly look nothing like the CGI creations of the movie world, robot warriors are very much a reality here on earth, and are growing in their impact on contemporary battlefields.

 

Most of these robotic warriors are to be found in the air. Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAV’s), as these small pilotless aircraft are known, are increasingly becoming an indispensable battlefield tool. Their primary role is reconnaissance and surveillance, giving battlefield commanders that all-important ability to see over the next hill, track a suspected terrorist through city streets, or even observe an enemy force from thousands of kilometres away. They come in a range of sizes and capabilities. The smallest UAV’s are designed to fit into an infantryman’s backpack, are launched by hand, and give small unit commanders the equivalent of high-ground advantage in a close-in fight. From there UAV’s get progressively larger and more capable, up to the so-called ‘Tier III+’ vehicles like the US Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk, which operates at around 60,000 to 65,000 feet, has a 3,000 nautical mile radius, can stay in the air for up to 36 hours, and can survey 100,000 square kilometers of terrain in a single day.

 

While UAV’s are still mostly used for reconnaissance and surveillance, there is a growing trend to, as the Americans like to say, ‘weaponize’ these robots of the air. Most of the new generation of UAV’s currently in development are being designed to be capable of carrying missiles and other weapons. The arming of UAV’s was largely driven by Cofer Black in 2000 and 2001, when he was head of the CIA`s Counterterrorist Centre tasked with hunting down Osama Bin Laden. [Black is now one of the directors of the controversial private military company Blackwater USA, which is developing its own UAV.] The result of Black’s advocacy is the MQ-1 Predator, a UAV which can patrol the skies for over 24 hours at a time and can be armed with two Hellfire anti-tank guided missiles, small bombs, or even Stinger air-to-air missiles.

 

Military commanders are increasingly aware of what is known as the ‘OODA loop’. Also known as the Boyd cycle, after its originator US Air Force Colonel John Boyd, the OODA loop is widely believed to be the critical factor in military success. The idea is that victory belongs to whichever party in a military engagement is quickest to go through the steps of Observe, Orient, Decide and Act (OODA). UAV’s deployed in their reconnaissance and surveillance roles give commanders a distinct advantage in observing enemy forces. However that still leaves the challenge of getting forces into place to respond to a threat when one is detected. Arming UAV’s is an obvious and effective way of closing the OODA loop quickly and efficiently. Instead of having to call up reaction forces or an airstrike, once a threat is identified the UAV operator can simply hit a few buttons and destroy the target with the UAV’s own weapons. Because UAV’s are unobtrusive and missiles like the Hellfire are supersonic, the enemy will usually have no idea he is being engaged until it is far too late to react.

 

Armed robots are not restricted to the skies. Navies are increasingly turning their attention to the potential of small unmanned and armed boats as a means to patrol high-risk maritime environments and keep potential threats well away from manned vessels. And the US Army has recently announced that it has deployed three small armed ground robots to Iraq. These SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action Systems) can be equipped with a range of weapons including a 5.56 mm Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), a 7.62 mm machine gun, or a .50 caliber sniper rifle. They are controlled by an operator using a small console like a laptop, though Foster-Miller, the manufacturer of the system, is reportedly working on a ‘Game Boy’ style controller that will be combined with virtual reality goggles for future operators. The small tracked robot is to be used primarily in urban environments where it will be used to ‘clear’ buildings and other terrain where there is perceived to be a high casualty risk inherent in committing human soldiers.

 

While there are significant advantages to the use of battlefield robots, particularly in minimising casualties to ones own soldiers, they nonetheless pose significant ethical challenges. For one thing they offer capabilities that are open to abuse. In November 2002, for example, a CIA Predator UAV, flown from a French military base in Djibouti, was used to assassinate a suspected al-Qaeda leader in Lebanon. The ability to ‘reach out and touch someone’, along with all the inherent violations of accepted ethical practice and norms of national sovereignty, has never been greater.

 

Another ethical challenge arises from an increasing trend towards giving these robotic warriors autonomy. Many new generation UAV’s, for example, don’t require a pilot and only revert to the ‘human in the loop’ when a critical decision, such as the decision to fire a weapon, needs to be made. The technology already exists to cut out the human operator altogether - the ultimate closing of the OODA cycle. Indeed, the US Army’s ‘Future Combat Systems Project’ aims to produce a largely autonomous ‘robot army’ that can be used in operations by 2012. As ethicist Robert Sparrow of Monash University in Australia has recently pointed out, autonomous robotic weapons systems pose a very serious and difficult to answer question: who should be held responsible when an autonomous weapon system is involved in an atrocity of the sort that would normally be described as a war crime?

 

As mentioned above, killer robots have already been deployed from African soil. Several African countries, including Angola and South Africa, already operate reconnaissance UAV’s, and there is every likelihood that these effective force-multipliers will increase in number on our continent, in roles ranging from maritime patrol to cease-fire monitoring, environmental surveys and cargo transport. It is only a matter of time before armed robots make their presence felt in Africa. Indeed, Denel Aviation already has plans for a UAV, the SERAPH, which, according to their website, is ‘designed to carry out deep penetration reconnaissance missions and autonomous strike operations’. It is essential that Africans take close heed of these developments. We must ensure that technological advances do not outstrip our ability to ethically control these robot warriors.

 

Dr Deane-Peter Baker, Editor: African Security Review, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)