The move reflects a broader trend across the West, with nations opening to the possibility of using autonomous weapons on the battlefield.
The UK is re-examining its attitude toward allowing autonomous drones to use lethal force, British Armed Forces minister Alistair Carns said in comments published in the Financial Times on May 30.
The current policy of Britain’s military, according to documents published in 2022, states that there would be “context-appropriate human involvement” in the selection and engagement of targets.
However, in the wake of rapid advances in drone warfare, some officials are pushing to make human involvement in such decisions optional.
Carns, who served in the Royal Marines before entering politics, suggested that there might be exceptional circumstances in which AI-enabled machines made targeting decisions on their own.
“I always say there must be a human in the loop. But you must have the ability to take the human out of the loop when required, because our adversaries won’t care about having a human in the loop,” he told the Financial Times.
Carns said some existing British weapons were already operating with significant autonomy, “where missile systems can fly forward and identify targets and strike them,“ but he maintained that his views were in step with London’s current policy, saying, ”We have strict rules and regulations, we’ll stick to them.”
Britain’s doctrine on autonomous weapons, published by the UK Ministry of Defence in a 2022 document titled “Ambitious, Safe, Responsible,“ does not rule out incorporating AI within weapon systems, but does state that the government is ”very clear that there must be context-appropriate human involvement in weapons which identify, select and attack targets.”
Additionally, a British government submission to the U.N. Office of Disarmament Affairs in 2024 says the country doesn’t have any fully autonomous weapon systems, “meaning weapons that operate without context-appropriate human involvement or outside of human responsibility and accountability.”
It also states that Britain “has no intention of developing them” and goes further, saying that “no state should develop or deploy such systems.”
On Feb. 20, the government launched a review of the regulatory environment governing uncrewed and autonomous systems in defense, saying that it must be “updated to be fit for the current era of threat“ and that the environment must be ”as permissive and simple as possible to enable fast delivery, scale up and innovation.”
The government’s move reflects a broader trend across the West, with nations opening to the possibility of using autonomous weapons on the battlefield.
By Guy Birchall
