Desirability of Using AWS

Many advantages are ascribed in literature to autonomous weapons (AWS), but this must be balanced against two important points: first, that not all advantages are exclusive to AWS technology, and second, that any such advantages must be weighed against the difficulty attached to using a particular AWS in a given environment. To that end, this chapter argues that using AWS will in practice only be desirable in circumstances where the projected benefits outweigh the effort, time, resources and diligence that are required to use them lawfully and keep them under control. This chapter introduces two variables, Benefit and Facility, that can be used to rapidly analyse whether using AWS for particular missions is operationally justifiable. Benefit is assessed by first determining whether an AWS is indispensably necessary; if not indispensable, Benefit is assessed on a scale. Facility, representing how easily the system can be used lawfully, is derived from the analyses in Chaps.  8 and 9 . The two variables are then placed on a two-axial diagram akin to other risk assessment methodologies common in military decision-making to determine the desirability of using particular AWS. It is demonstrated that only very specific conditions justify using AWS, given that they often provide only marginal comparative advantage to, and using them is often more cumbersome than, non-AWS alternatives. From this finding, it is recommended that the AWS debate should be directed more toward these systems that are operationally desirable and realistically see a chance of being used, and away from fantastical Terminator-bots.