Until today, there are no autonomous killer robots, however the direction in which military technology is developing can be foreseen: Revolutionary technological improvements aim at completely autonomous weapon systems.
In the course of this progress, civil and military research influence each other. Advances in robotics can be used, on the one hand, for constructing fully automatic vacuum cleaners or autonomous cars that do not require a human driver.
On the other hand they can likewise be deployed in the development of weapon systems. From a military strategic standpoint there may be many advantages connected to these technologies; once they exist, as the authors fear, they will give rise to an arms race among states, which cannot be brought to an end.
In HSFK-Standpunkt 08/2013 "Keine Macht den Drohnen! Warum Deutschland sich jetzt gegen autonom tötende Militärsysteme einsetzen muss", Niklas Schörnig and Christian Weidlich therefore demand that not only the legal but also the ethical dimension of this highly morally questionable technology should be considered.
Germany should play a leading role at the Meeting of Experts at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which will be held by 117 states in May 2014 discussing emerging technologies.
Christian Weidlich is a project member at PRIF. He studied German philology, political sciences, international studies, and peace research.
This HSFK-Standpunkt ist available as a free PDF download.