I assume you aren't American, Canadian, or Western European. The news constantly discussed IEDs in the context of the Iraq and Afghan wars and UXO is used whenever a bomb is discovered leftover from one of the World Wars.

It is also very searchable, at least to me. The results returned are very relevant.

https://www.google.com/search?q=IED%2FUXO&rlz=1C1CHBF_enCA85...

I'm guessing you're not in the US (or UK) where IED and PTSD acronyms have been used so much in the context of physical and psychological injury in the Middle East tha they are pop culture hard to avoid knowing. Certainly, in the US, the first term that pops up in a search for IED is:

IED

/ˌīēˈdē/

noun: a simple bomb made and used by unofficial or unauthorized forces.

Danger UXB (UneXplodedBomb) was a popular British drama 30+ years ago.

Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), Improvised Explosive Device (IED), Unexploded Ordnance (UXO). Civilian police use of robotics started with EOD robots, often borrowed from the military.

>But how the hell is it acceptable to use sth like "IED/UXO" on an article about ethics?

how the hell do you expect to understand an article on autonomous drones ethics without knowing that IED/UXO means? It makes obvious that you lack basic knowledge of modern factual landscape in the domain, and how do you expect to understand ethics of the domain without basic factual knowledge of the domain?

The argument that those acronyms are a requirement for the understanding of the ethics of autonomous killer robots is a very difficult one.

it is a major drone use case. Understanding an ethics of technology without knowledge of major use cases - that is a difficult argument.

My bad, dude. The ambiguity has been addressed in other people's replies.