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Robotic Warfare, Human Rights & the Rhetorics of Ethical Machines
Jutta Weber DRAFT to appear in:
Rafael Capurro / Michael Nagenborg / Giugelmo Tamburinni (eds.): Ethics and Robotics. Deutscher Akademieverlag (in preparation)

Abstract Killing with robots is no more a future scenario but became a reality in the first decade of the 21st century. The U.S. and Israel forces are using uninhabited combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) in their so-called wars on terror, especially for targeted killing missions in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan as well as in Lebanon and the Palestinian occupied territories (for example in Israel’s recent war on Gaza). In the last years, the number of UCAV air attacks is rising significantly as well as the number of killed civilians. Nevertheless, the automation of warfare is envisioned by the US government and military for 2032 at the latest and military robots are increasingly used in civilian contexts. In the face of these developments, discussions on robotic warfare as well as security technology from a science and technology studies and technoethical perspective are highly needed. Important questions are how robotic warfare and security applications may find their way into society on a broad scale and whether this might lead to a new global arms race, violation of the international law of warfare, an increasing endangerment of civilians transporting racist and sexist implications, and the blurring of boundaries between military, police and civil society.

Introduction The Iraq and Afghan wars can be seen as a test bed for the development of U.S. military robots as well as robotic warfare. While ground and water combat robots are still under development, unmanned combat aerial vehicles are already used widely. For example, today tele-operated uninhabited combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) are regularly and in increasing numbers deployed by the US and NATO forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Cordesman 2008). The numbers of civilians