Military and autonomous weapons

This vectorVectorThe path by which a risk moves from the screen into the world: biological, cyber, military, economic, political, epistemic or loss of control. In this observatory, each vector has its own colour.For exampleA burglar can get in through the door, the window or the roof. The burglar is the risk; the door, the window and the roof are the vectors. is almost always discussed through the wrong object. The harm does not enter through a weapon that decides to kill, but through two duller and more present things: the compression of decision time and the progressive delegation of stretches of the attack cycle. US nuclear doctrine explicitly keeps a human in the loop for everything critical ^[334]2022 Nuclear Posture ReviewU.S. Department of Defense · 2022 · official documentView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026; the risk SIPRI documents lies earlier, in non-nuclear decision-support systems that “can compress decision-making timeframes” and bias towards acting ^[972]Impact of Military Artificial Intelligence on Nuclear Escalation RiskChernavskikh, Vladislav; Palayer, Jules · 2025 · reportView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026.

What is deployed at scale in Ukraine is not full autonomy but terminal guidance: the human identifies and confirms the target, and only then does the system take over the final flight, which raises the hit rate from 10-20% to 70-80% ^[299]Ukraine's Future Vision and Current Capabilities for Waging AI-Enabled Autonomous WarfareBondar, Kateryna · 2025 · reportView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026. Under the Geneva characterisation that does not constitute a lethal autonomous weapon ^[208]Report of the 2024-2025-2026 sessions of the Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (CCW/GGE.1/2026/CRP.1/Rev.1)Group of Governmental Experts on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems · 2026 · official documentView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026. The Molniya case of July 2026 sits on the boundary of that definition —the human set the area, the system chose the object— and the autonomy is inferred from forensic evidence, not from telemetry ^[385]A Russian drone chose its own target and killed three. The code that told it what to look for was readableEuromaidan Press · 2026 · pressView source ↗archived copy onlyAccessed on 9 September 2026.

What distinguishes this vector is that its governance is the oldest and the least binding. The UN High Commissioner called in September 2026 for an urgent ban, and noted in the same sentence that the UN High Commissioner referred to «reports» that both sides were testing these weapons, without the UN having verified them itself ^[814]Global Update to the 63rd session of the Human Rights CouncilTürk, Volker · 2026 · official documentView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026. Nor is the boundary between state and supplier regulated: it was settled through litigation ^[290]Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute over Autonomous Weapon Systems: Potential Issues for CongressSayler, Kelley M. · 2026 · official documentView source ↗archived copy onlyAccessed on 9 September 2026.