The Pentagon aims for drones to exert lethal force without human control

Evidence

In the United States, the Department of Defense today looks forward to “gradually reducing the role of human control and decision” in the functioning of drones. Although it may initially be a matter of moving into a “supervised autonomy,” in the long term the aim is to establish total autonomy. At this point, human agents would be neither in the loop nor over it (in the sense of supervision), but completely out of the loop. What is envisaged is a situation in which “robots are capable of exerting lethal force without human control or intervention.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 652

Categorization

• QUESTION: When was this written, and what is the current official policy status of ‘supervised autonomy’ vs full autonomy?
• XREF: connects to: Soviet dead hand system could launch retaliatory missiles without human action; Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones; Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties (+2 more)

Related

• Remote-controlled machines were proposed as a third option beyond protected men or autonomous machines (similarity 0.86)
• Drones centralize kill authority upward into hierarchy rather than handing control to machines (similarity 0.86)
• Present-day drones combine remote control and autonomous piloting. (similarity 0.86)
• Soviet dead hand system could launch retaliatory missiles without human action (similarity 0.86)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.85)
• Drone warfare pits unburdened machines against bodies bound by physical limits. (similarity 0.85)
• Drones add the remote control’s range to the weapon’s range. (similarity 0.84)
• Armed drones make killing a priori one-directional, converting combat into slaughter. (similarity 0.84)
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones (similarity 0.84)
• Autonomous armed robots can select and destroy targets without human control (similarity 0.84)
• Armed drones reshape sovereignty over a state’s own subjects, not just enemies (similarity 0.83)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.83)
• Drones resolve the guerrilla problem by depriving insurgents of any target to attack. (similarity 0.83)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.83)
• Drones evolved from surveillance eyes into lethal hunter-killer weapons. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Drones centralize kill authority upward into hierarchy rather than handing control to machines #contradicts (0.85) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 675
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones #expands (0.60)
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death #expands (0.55)
• Drones are morally justified by preventing one’s own casualties #expands (0.50)