And somehow these rules tend to put restrictions on things which are a force multiplier for smaller forces against larger ones or would make it very costly for a larger country to attack a smaller one. They protect the incumbents. It makes sense why big militaries would want rules like this - this makes it much less costly for big countries to war with smaller ones. Russia didn't want Ukraine to have nukes. A few decades later Russia invaded Ukraine.
It is okay for a US drone to strike a target and kill civilians. The civilians will just be defined as "enemy combatants" and the world moves on. However, if people from that same place somehow manage to kill the drone operator then that would be a terror attack.
The most concerned party at that time was the US. Having multiple nuclear armed ex-USSR states was contrary to their interests.
The better example is the US not wanting Gaddafi to have nukes and later invading Libya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Whats relevant though is that most soldiers obeyed the orders and preferred to commit war crimes. Even in the US military which has a strong moral ethos (or likes to portray itself that way which for the common soldier is the same thing) But what about all the other, smaller countries?
I don't feel we've become profoundly nicer since then.
We've since developed PGMs which allow us to minimize collateral damage more than ever before. We can destroy strategic targets of military interest with pinpoint accuracy. People that commit war crimes are reported by their fellow soldiers and justice is (usually) served. Sometimes war criminals are pardoned even after being turned in (like Gallagher), but this is rare and usually results in national outrage.
Committing war crimes has effectively been the national defense policy of last resort since WW2. That's what the nukes (and formerly chemical and biological weapons) are for. The implicit threat is that the US will massacre your civilian population.
And I don't mean that as any special criticism of the US. Most countries have a similar attitude of the rules of war going out the window when things get bad enough.
I'm not sure about the "square full" bit.
So..how do you explain, to give but one example, the hundreds of thousands the US killed in Iraq?
If insurgents hide and fight among civilians, civilians are going to die in the process of destroying the insurgents. It's like cancer - you can't kill cancer without killing tons of healthy innocent cells around it.
I don't necessarily agree with the US's prolonged occupation in the middle east, but it's highly disingenuous to imply US military leaders are commanding their soldiers and pilots to intentionally kill civilians.
A landmine is indiscriminate, by that logic anything with a triggerable fuze is autonomous (even a snare trap would be). The difference would be if the landmine chose to explode based on some other factor.
Autonomy and intelligence are not the same thing.
Autonomy gets truly dangerous because you dont need to create death zones and no mans land. They are not a less violent version of just bombing the area. They can run considerations and decide by themselves who to kill and with this, their usage outside of active front lines will be considered. And with that, the people deploying them give up the decision and delegate it to an algorithm or worse yet, a trained black box. Reality will be to have completely unaccountable killers bots flying over countries who cant defend themselves against foreign aggression.
This stuff has absolutely horrible potential and i find it prudent to shame and cut out anyone with a sufficient lack of a spine to work in this area. As unpopular as it is to consider the impact of the technology you are developing, it is taught for a reason in a CS degree. This work has the potential to screw over humanity for a while to come.
There have already been cases of "autonomous" targeting, such as in 1982 when Exocet missiles fired by Argentine aircraft at a British warship selected a cargo ship instead (possibly due to countermeasures used by the warship). In this case, the weapon hit a target not intended by the firing unit. Of course, unguided weapons do this all the time...
The combination of the two is interesting. The Mark 60 CAPTOR is a naval mine that launches an acoustically guided Mark 46 torpedo.