[This article originally appeared in CQ Researcher.]

The deployment of weapon systems with increasingly autonomous modes or functions is a fact of contemporary conflicts. Autonomous weapon systems (AWS) are already used against military objectives, such as missiles, radars and warships in environments where civilians are absent or excluded, and often under human supervision.

However, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is witnessing trends toward loosening the constraints on where, and against what, such weapons may be used, while at the same time we see the development of swarm technologies and the integration of artificial intelligence into how AWS select and engage targets. In the view of the ICRC, many states and others, AWS are weapon systems that, once activated, can select and engage one or more targets without further human intervention.

After activation, strikes are triggered in response to environmental inputs and generalized target profiles, which means the human user cannot determine in advance who or what will be struck, or exactly when or where the force will be applied. This loss of human control and judgment in decisions over life and death raises profound humanitarian, legal and ethical concerns, including the risk of harm to civilians and combatants, the danger of conflict escalation and challenges to compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the law of armed conflict.

Driven by these concerns, the ICRC has called on states to urgently establish new legally binding rules; ones that articulate specific conditions and limits on AWS, including those that cannot be employed in compliance with IHL. In the ICRC’s view, a new international instrument needs to prohibit unpredictable AWS, whose functioning and effects cannot be sufficiently understood, predicted or explained, and to prohibit AWS designed or used to target humans directly.

It must also restrict all other AWS through limits on the type of targets; limits on the duration, scale and geographic scope of operation; limits on the situations of use, namely constraining them to situations where civilians or civilian objects are not present and requirements for effective human supervision, timely intervention and deactivation or, where necessary, self-destruction or self-neutralization.

Without timely agreement on a new legally binding instrument, emerging patterns in the research, development and use of AWS may become difficult to reverse, with lasting humanitarian and legal consequences. Establishing these prohibitions and restrictions in clear and binding international law is therefore an urgent humanitarian and legal priority.