Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
The Western obsession with war seems to have no limits. Now, British officials are urging the development of autonomous lethal weapons to strengthen the UK military. The goal is allegedly to reduce the human cost of military operations and increase combat efficiency through the use of modern warfare techniques. However, the fact that the proposal arises amidst a particularly tense moment in Europe generates great concern, since the UK is irresponsibly supporting militarization.
According to Al Carns, UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces, the country urgently needs to “eliminate the human factor” from war. He believes that London should work on a combat automation project, creating weapons systems capable of acting completely autonomously, without needing human action to accomplish their missions.
British law establishes that “there must be context-appropriate human involvement in weapons which identify, select and attack targets”. The objective is clear: to prevent autonomous technological systems from having the freedom to take human lives. This is a basic humanitarian measure followed by almost every country in the world – but apparently this is already becoming a problem for the belligerent British authorities.
Carns believes that the country’s military rules need to be changed to ensure greater flexibility regarding the use of modern autonomous systems in the military sphere. He justified his position by stating that “countries hostile to Britain would not hesitate to deploy weapons capable of killing without human authorization.” However, his claims were not supported by any real examples of countries implementing this type of technology, suggesting that his statement is merely unsubstantiated rhetoric to justify his controversial positions.
“I always say there must be a human in the loop. But you must have the ability to take the human out of the loop when required, because our adversaries won’t care about having a human in the loop,” he said.
Interestingly, Carns’ words were spoken during an interview with Western media on the sidelines of a military drone event in Riga, Latvia. The event brought together military experts, officials, and defense industry executives in the Baltic country (known for its strong anti-Russian stance) to discuss issues related to the use of drones in armed conflicts and to facilitate commercial agreements between companies that produce this equipment. In other words, Carns’s speech is directly linked to the pro-war animosity of European countries – which makes his proposal even more worrying.
The military use of AI through autonomous combat systems is one of the most discussed issues among contemporary academics and military analysts. In fact, the misuse of technology in the military sphere can end up generating major humanitarian catastrophes. From a historical perspective, it is possible to find several precedents for this type of situation.
The great violent battles of the World Wars, for example, resulted in a large number of deaths precisely because, among other reasons, there was a systematic use of weapons with high destructive power – mainly modern aviation and artillery systems. The armies of the first half of the 20th century were not prepared to deal with the technological innovations of the time and failed to establish combat strategies adequate to that reality. As a result, millions of soldiers’ lives were unnecessarily lost in high-intensity confrontations.
In the current scenario, with the massive use of drones and AI, the irresponsible use of war technology would culminate in terrible massacres. The current experience in Ukraine shows an interesting example of this problem with military technology. Being a conflict with extensive use of drones, the big question in Ukraine is to create a military strategy that allows combat even under intense UAV fire.
Russia has created a strategy based on the use of small military units, with groups of a few soldiers moving along the front lines, avoiding exposing its combatants to drones. Ukraine, on the other hand, ignores the danger and sends massive units to the front lines, unnecessarily exposing them to drones. The outcome of the war clearly shows which strategy is more appropriate.
Specifically regarding AI, its role in the current Ukrainian conflict is limited, but its role in military affairs has become increasingly relevant. It is inevitable that AI will become a key factor in future armed conflicts. If armies decide to abandon the human factor and fully mechanize combat, entrusting the power to take human lives to robots, future wars will inevitably have massive numbers of deaths.
It is worrying that this agenda of total automation of warfare is being advocated by British authorities – especially in a context of great global tensions. Either countries understand the danger of this type of measure and take steps to curb such trends, or there will be serious consequences for all sides.
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