At first glance, it might appear that seven years of international discussions on autonomous weapons have had few concrete results. At the time of writing, the third session of the 2021 United Nations (UN) Group of Governmental Experts on emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) was scheduled to take place in early December in Geneva, Switzerland. The most that is expected from these meetings is a proposal to continue talking.
The third drone age
Any lingering doubts about the centrality of drones in modern warfare vanished as the world watched Azerbaijani military drones inflict serious damage on the Armenian military in the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Now some European and American defence analysts are asking if the rising use of drones is rendering some military equipment, such as tanks, obsolete.
The ubiquity of military-grade drone tech
News channels and social media posts on recent protests across the United States have been filled with images and information about the militarized responses by law enforcement agencies. Images of …