If AFADS are WMD, the non- and counter-proliferation policies, treaties, and norms applied to traditional WMD are all worth considering. From a national-security perspective, classifying AFADS as WMD also has an impact, since the use of WMD, including chemical agents, can radically change public support for military action. Traditional WMD agents-biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons-also have numerous policies, programs, governmental and international organizations, and treaties aimed at combating their proliferation and providing a framework for responding to their use. These treaties limit the placement of WMD in “global commons” areas (the ocean bed and outer space), but they do so without precisely defining WMD. Legally, classifying AFADS as WMD means the Seabed Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty apply to swarms. While such drone swarms bare some strong similarities to traditional WMD, they also have major differences. Conceptually, understanding whether AFADS are (or are not) WMD requires careful debate over the scope of the term and alternatives. Why Classification Matters (and Why it’s Hard)Ĭlassification of drone swarms as WMD has significant conceptual, legal, and national security implications. As I argue in my new study at the US Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies, AFADS can exceed any arbitrary threshold for mass casualties and are inherently unable to distinguish between military and civilian targets. (For the purposes of this article, I define “fully autonomous” to mean weapon systems that are both self-targeting and self-mobile “drone” as any unmanned platform operating on land, sea, air, or space and “drone swarms” as the use of multiple drones collaborating to achieve shared objectives.)īecause of this, AFADS should be classified as weapons of mass destruction. Combining these technologies creates a slaughterbots-style weapon: an armed, fully autonomous drone swarm-or AFADS. At the same time, a range of states have developed or are developing autonomous (primarily stationary defensive) weapons, from South Korea’s SGR-A1 gun turret to the United States’ Phalanx close-in weapon system.
Russia, China, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and others are developing swarms too. Every leg of the US military is developing drone swarms-including the Navy’s swarming boats and the Air Force’s plan to employ swarms in a wide range of military roles, from intelligence collection to suppression of enemy air defenses. The drones assassinate activists and political leaders, and a slaughterbots manufacturer claims that $25 million of drones can wipe out half a city.Īlthough slaughterbots are fiction, numerous states are developing both drone-swarm technology and autonomous weapons. In the video, fictionalized swarms of drones recognize, target, and kill opponents autonomously. Russell and the Future of Life Institute released the video on YouTube, it quickly went viral. In 2017, artificial-intelligence researcher Stuart Russell presented the “ Slaughterbots” video at a meeting of the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons.
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