Lethal autonomous weapon

Lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) are a type of military robot designed to select and attack military targets (people, installations) without intervention by a human operator. LAW are also called lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), lethal autonomous robots (LAR), robotic weapons, or killer robots. LAWs may operate in the air, on land, on water, under water, or in space. The autonomy of current systems as of 2016^[update] is restricted in the sense that a human gives the final command to attack - though there are exceptions with certain "defensive" systems.

LAWs should not be confused with unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or "combat drones", which are currently remote-controlled by a pilot: only some LAWS are combat drones. Even those combat drones that can fly autonomously do not currently fire autonomously - they have "a human in the loop".

The oldest automatically-triggered lethal weapon is the land mine, used since at least the 1600s, and naval mines, used since at least the 1700s. Anti-personnel mines are banned in many countries by the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, not including the United States, Russia, and much of Asia and the Middle East.

Some current examples of LAWs are automated "hardkill" active protection systems, such as a radar-guided gun to defend ships that have been in use since the 1970s (e.g. the US Phalanx CIWS). Such systems can autonomously identify and attack oncoming missiles, rockets, artillery fire, aircraft and surface vessels according to criteria set by the human operator. Similar systems exist for tanks, such as the Russian Arena, the Israeli Tropy, and the German AMAP-ADS. Several types of stationary sentry guns, which can fire at humans and vehicles, are used in South Korea and Israel. Many missile defense systems, such as Iron Dome, also have autonomous targeting capabilities.

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