ai powered lethal autonomous weapon systems in defence transformation impact and challenges

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing business, and transforming defense and warfare. In particular, the paper addresses the challenges from the easy availability of AI resources to be applied to drones that are already an asymmetric threat, and the issues concerning the Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) that promise military advantages like the reduction of deployed soldiers, loss of civilians, damage of infrastructures, and the rapid support to decision-making. Autonomous systems can also help in disaster and humanitarian operations. However, the deployment of systems that are more and more autonomous from humans poses multidimensional challenges for their certification, compliance with ethics and international humanitarian law and present risks to security. Mechanisms for the mitigation of their proliferation to malicious non-state actors and a meaningful human control should be implemented. War gaming in a theoretical, risk-safe environment can assess the threats and impact of robotic weapons on future defense planning and operations. From the example of the lessons learned in the automotive industry, simulation can be applied to digital twin models of the AI system and the environment to train and test under unexpected and extreme conditions, unanticipated hardware and software failure situations and in complex dynamic operational contexts including interaction with civilian entities.