IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2016 - 23

Tim McFarland

Military Robots:
Mapping the Moral Landscape
By Jai Galliott. Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 2015, 266 pp.

erhaps the most
wel l - k now n, a nd
controversial, development in military
technology in recent
years has been the rapid rise of
unmanned systems, the most visible manifestation of which has
undoubtedly been the use of
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs,
or "drones") against targets in the
Middle East and Africa.
In a sense, this is a unique development in the practice of warfighting, in that it is enabled by a
confluence of technologies never
before available to humanity, notably those related to robotics and
artificial intelligence. As Jai Galliott,
the author of this book notes, these
technologies facilitate development of weapons that "mediate the
operator's role and may ultimately
take action independently of their
human users," - a reference to the
steadily increasing capacities for
autonomous operation exhibited by
modern unmanned systems.
In a nother sense, thoug h,
it is just the latest manifestation
of a pattern of weapon development that has been followed for
thousands of years. Humans have
always sought to develop new
weapon technologies with which

to fight their enemies more effectively and efficiently and at less
risk to themselves. Many such
technologies have achieved their
operational aims by adding a "buffer zone" between friend and foe,
ostensibly to make warfare "cleaner" and quicker; spears, bows and
arrows, mechanical artillery, gunpowder, and others up to modern
firearms, artillery, and missiles are
all examples of this process, and
unmanned systems can be seen as
the next stage in this physical and
emotional distancing of attackers
from their targets.
It is no surprise, then, that the
ethical issues cited by participants
in the contentious debate about
unmanned military systems are
also a mixture of old and new,
those that relate to the novel characteristics of unmanned systems
and those that are arguably applicable to weapon technologies and
warfighting in general. Given the
revolutionary nature of unmanned
military systems and their extensive ramifications, both promising
and ominous for the future of warfare, it is unfortunate that discussions about the ethics associated
with their use are often shallow
and polarized.
In this book, Dr. Jai Galliott, a
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in
Indo-Pacific Defense at the University of New South Wales and a former

P

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2016.2564504
Date of publication: 2 June 2016

june 2016

∕

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

officer of the Royal Australian Navy,
has presented an account that, happily, refrains from the partisanship
too often seen in publications on
this topic. Rather, the book stays
true to its title by addressing the
ethical arguments in favor of using
unmanned systems as well as the
reasons for caution. Moreover,
it goes beyond merely surveying
the ethical points for and against
unmanned warfare, and reconciles them into a coherent statement that, while unmanned warfare
improves on earlier modes of warfare in many ways, it also introduces a range of new problems which
point to the need for caution and
further research.
This is a scholarly work that
bases its arguments on ethical
theories, which while they are
undoubtedly well known to ethicists and academics working in
related fields, may be unfamiliar to readers with an interest in
unmanned systems. Thankfully, the
author takes the time to explain
the essential points of the relevant
theories in language that is generally clear and free of jargon, and
in a way that will be useful to anyone with an interest in military
ethics, even beyond discussion of
unmanned systems.
The author's justification for the
employment of unmanned systems
by military forces is expressed in

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