Contemporary Security Policy

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The evolution of targeted killing practices:

Autonomous weapons, future conflict, and the
international order

Michael Carl Haas & Sophie-Charlotte Fischer

To cite this article: Michael Carl Haas & Sophie-Charlotte Fischer (2017) The evolution of targeted
killing practices: Autonomous weapons, future conflict, and the international order, Contemporary
Security Policy, 38:2, 281-306, DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2017.1336407

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2017.1336407

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CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY, 2017
VOL. 38, NO. 2, 281–306
https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2017.1336407

The evolution of targeted killing practices:

Autonomous weapons, future conflict, and the
international order
Michael Carl Haas and Sophie-Charlotte Fischer
Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

ABSTRACT
This article examines the potential use of autonomous aerial weapons for
targeted killing purposes and, in doing so, looks beyond the now-familiar
“global war on terror.” We argue that the combination of novel capabilities
with the pre-existing military-theoretical frameworks of advanced Western
states, within which autonomous weapons will be embedded, may be
conducive to an expansion of targeted killings to scenarios other than military
counter-terrorism. The confluence of autonomous weapons and targeted
killing practices may therefore lead to a further weakening of long-standing
norms regulating the use of force, including in interstate scenarios. We also
find that international regulation is unlikely to forestall this outcome, and that
political-military insistence on centralized operational control may mitigate—
but not negate—the disruptive potential of these developments. As a result,
the possible consequences for the international order of an evolution of
targeted killing practices along these lines should not be underestimated.

KEYWORDS Aerial warfare; autonomous weapon; international order; interstate war; hybrid war;
targeted killing

The early 21st century has seen an increasing reliance on targeted killings as a
means of international security policy. This “normalization of individualized
targeted killing as a practice used by the state” (Waldron, 2015, p. 292) was, by
and large, a state reaction to the emergence of pervasive terrorist threats,
which were seen as emanating from territorial “safe havens” and directed
by centralized leadership structures (Johnston, 2012; Jordan, 2014b; Krishnan,
2013; Price, 2012). Significant policy and concomitant legal shifts have
enabled this massive expansion of the use of targeted killings, as have per-
ceived operational requirements of a more ad hoc nature. Many of these
developments are addressed at length in this special issue. But policy and exi-
gency have not been the only “game changers” in this regard. As Senn and
Troy (2017, p. 190) emphasize in their introduction, technological change
also matters. To this day, targeted killings can be of an intensely up close

CONTACT Michael Carl Haas michaas@ethz.ch

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
282 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

and personal nature, as is attested to by the killing of Osama Bin Laden by U.S.
Navy special operations forces in 2011 and hundreds of other recent kill/
capture operations (Naylor, 2015, pp. 391–402). It is equally apparent,
however, that the technological revolutions of the 20th century have had a
profound impact on the application of this controversial method, which has
long been spurned by the great majority of states.
This article investigates the potential of 21st-century advances in technol-
ogy to revolutionize targeted killings to a similar, or perhaps an even greater,
extent than the late 20th-century revolution in precision-guided munitions
(PGMs) has done (Watts, 2007). Specifically, we ask what impact the possible
introduction of autonomous weapons is likely to have on the scope and fre-
quency of targeted killings in future conflicts. Our focus in addressing this
question is on one main strand in the evolution of targeted killings, which
we believe will continue to play a particularly prominent—perhaps even
dominant—role: the reliance on aerial platforms and weaponry to conduct
such killings from afar.
We develop our argument in four steps. In the first part, we provide an
overview of emerging developments in machine autonomy, as they relate to
a potential future expansion of targeted killing practices. In the second part,
we examine the military-theoretical frameworks within which autonomous
weapons will necessarily be embedded. We then begin to move the targeted
killing debate beyond the now-familiar context of the “global war on
terror” and examine the potential use of autonomous aerial weapons in
future conflict scenarios, which we believe may extend well beyond its
current scope of military counter-terrorism operations. In the final part of
the paper, we look at potential constraints upon such an expansion, including
possible regulatory measures, as well as military-operational and political
restraints that may apply. We conclude the paper with a brief review of the
implications of future targeted killing practices for an international order
that is already buckling under the pressure, as Senn and Troy (2017, pp.
189–191) suggested in their introduction.
Our main findings are twofold. First, and most importantly, there is a
reason to expect that targeted killing practices will be de-linked from
current military counter-terrorism operations and that machine autonomy
is going to contribute to this trend. Both future conventional and hybrid con-
flict scenarios may see the use of targeted killings for purposes including
enhanced conventional deterrence, micro-targeting of enemy leadership per-
sonnel, intimidation of enemy leaders and populations, attempts at conflict
limitation and escalation control, and deniability of semi-covert air oper-
ations. Many of these applications could contribute to a further erosion of
existing norms on the use of force, and thus of the international order at
large. While regulation efforts are not necessarily doomed to fail, we expect
that they will have only limited impact, thus leaving it largely to individual
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 283

state actors to implement restraints on their respective targeted killing prac-

tices. Some of these restraints will almost certainly result from the reluctance
of military and political leaders to surrender tight hierarchical control over a
highly sensitive category of operations. It is unlikely, however, that such oper-
ational restraints will, by themselves, be sufficient to avert further damage to
the incumbent international order, as far as its ability to effectively regulate
the use of force is concerned.

The coming transformation of aerial warfare

From the U.S. Army Air Forces’ shoot-down of Adm. Yamamoto Isoruku in
1943 to Russia’s 1996 assassination of Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar
Dudayev, airpower has often been at the forefront of the evolution of targeted
killing practices in the 20th century. The wave of targeted killings that began
in the early 2000s has harnessed, and made liberal use of, a variety of aerial
platforms and PGMs first fielded in the 1980s and 1990s, often for different
purposes entirely (Lambeth, 2000, pp. 54–102). In their introduction, Senn
and Troy (2017, p. 190) have already highlighted the role unmanned aircraft,
or aerial “drones,” have played in the most recent wave of targeted killings.
The evolution of drones for information, surveillance, target acquisition,
and reconnaissance (ISTAR) as well as attack missions and the availability
of advanced munitions have been crucial enablers of targeted killing practices
in the “global war on terror” (Byman, 2013; Callam, 2010). Together, the
means and methods of wide-area reconnaissance and precision attack from
a distance have made it much easier to execute persistent campaigns of tar-
geted killings across a large swath of territory, as opposed to the isolated
attacks of the past.
We contend that this pattern of adapting emerging means and methods of
aerial warfare to a targeted killing “mission set” is likely to persist, for as long
as a number of states with advanced air forces—including the United States,
the United Kingdom, and Israel—routinely conduct such operations. There-
fore, we argue that important clues as to the future of the practice of targeted
killing can be derived from an analysis of ongoing trends in military affairs,
which are likely to be embraced by the actors at the helm of the most
recent expansion of targeted killing.
Currently, the technological development with the greatest transformative
potential in the field of aerial weapons is the prospect of increasing the auton-
omy of critical functions in weapon systems, which is made possible by accel-
erating advances in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.
Together, these advances have the potential to effect yet another revolution in
aerial warfare. In the following section, we proceed to outline the observable
technological trends in some detail and explain how they relate to the targeted
killing “mission set.”
284 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

The rise of machine autonomy

In the course of the “war on terror,” unmanned aerial vehicles provided
Western states the opportunity to respond to security threats in politically
and geographically challenging environments. They enabled military com-
manders to maintain a close watch over potential targets from afar and
allowed them to strike those targets at a moment’s notice, without a need
to put soldiers’ lives at risk, or even to commit additional resources (Mayer,
2015; Sauer & Schörnig, 2012; Shaw, 2013). Data gathered by drones equipped
with high-end sensors provided crucial information about the location, activi-
ties, and organizational relationships of enemy operatives. Missions of much
longer duration than those typical of manned aircraft could be flown on a
routine basis. Close observation of a target with no risk to friendly personnel
and the use of payloads such as the air-to-ground Hellfire missile, with a
warhead one-tenth the size of a 500-pound general-purpose bomb’s, could
—and probably did—reduce civilian casualties to a significant extent
(Byman, 2013).
As a result, relatively primitive drone technology has already changed the
face of warfare, both in acknowledged conflict zones, such as Afghanistan and
Iraq, and in largely unacknowledged “shadow wars” (Axe, 2013) in Pakistan,
East Africa, and Yemen. Looking beyond this now-familiar context, the utility
of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) that have seen frequent use in
military counter-terrorism, such as the United States’ MQ-9 Reaper, is limited
by their low airspeed, limited payloads, and lack of survivability. They also
feature low degrees of automation (or none at all). While they are remotely
piloted, a sizable ground crew is required to control every aspect of their oper-
ations by means of a satellite link or line-of-sight antenna (Gilli & Gilli, 2016).
This includes not just drone operators and sensor specialists, but also groups
of analysts, who interpret and analyze the copious amounts of data produced
by the drones’ sensors. As a result, this first generation of UCAVs is now far
behind the curve of burgeoning developments in military technology and will
begin to be replaced by more advanced systems in the 2020s.
In fact, rapid technological advances in the fields of robotics, AI, and
machine learning have already introduced a new generation of robotic
systems into the civilian sphere. These same advances are being harnessed
to develop robotic systems for military purposes that will feature increasing
degrees of autonomy with regard to critical systemic functions (Work &
Brimley, 2014, pp. 22–25). While the focus of this article is on aerial
systems, the same will likely be true with regard to many military missions
in the sea, land, space and cyber domains as well. These ongoing trends
have the potential of cumulating in the development of autonomous
weapon systems (AWS) that are distinguished by their ability to “once acti-
vated, select and engage targets without further intervention by a human
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 285

operator” (Department of Defense, 2012, p. 13). If developed and deployed,

some experts believe that these systems could have a transformative impact
on established methods of warfare (Work & Brimley, 2014, pp. 7–9). As far
as the future use of targeted killings is concerned, we believe that the introduc-
tion of some elements of machine autonomy is highly likely even in the near
term. However, to make sense of these developments, it is first necessary to
gain a more nuanced understanding of the concept of autonomy than the
above definition can provide.

A functional approach to autonomy in weapon systems

Although there has been a noticeable increase in public attention to, and aca-
demic publications on, the implications—legal and ethical, as well as strategic
—of the development and deployment of AWS, the concept of “autonomy”
remains poorly understood. To this day, neither academics nor policy
makers have been able to agree on a common understanding of AWS,
thereby complicating discussions on the potential benefits and risks associated
with this important technological trend. According to Scharre and Horowitz
(2015, p. 5), existing definitions emphasize one of three different dimensions
of autonomy: the human–machine command-and-control relationship, the
complexity of the decisions made by the machine, or the functions of the
system that are made autonomous.
A frequent approach, used by actors as varied as Human Rights Watch and
the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), is to define autonomy in terms of
human involvement in the execution of a machine’s tasks. Systems that are
marked by full human control over all the machine’s core tasks are considered
“human-in-the-loop” systems. When systems can operate independently, but
humans can still review its decisions and intervene in the case of malfunction,
they are often called “on-the-loop” or “human-supervised” systems. A system
that can carry out its tasks completely independently, leaving no opportunity
for a human to intervene, is considered an autonomous weapon or “human-
out-of-the-loop” system (Scharre & Horowitz, 2015, p. 6).
However, this classification does not capture another relevant—and much
more fine-grained—dimension of autonomy: namely, the complexity of
machines’ decision-making processes. This dimension emphasizes the capa-
bility of a machine to incorporate uncertainties in its environment into the
decision-making process and adapt to them (Boulanin, 2016a, p. 3). While
systems that are classified as automatic, such as landmines, simply respond
more or less mechanically to some well-defined input (Scharre, 2015,
p. 10), the distinction between automated and autonomous weapons is
more difficult. Often, missile defense systems such as Israel’s Iron Dome
are considered highly automated as they are pre-programmed rule-based
systems, which provide largely predictable outcomes (Scharre, 2015, p. 10).
286 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

Truly autonomous systems are far more complex, as they would be able to
reason probabilistically based on a set of inputs, compose different courses
of actions, and then select and execute the best option without human inter-
vention at any of these stages (Cummings, 2017, p. 3).
A third, “functional view” of autonomy, which is elaborated by Boulanin
(2016a) and which we will build on in this paper, emphasizes that autonomy
is not a general characteristic of a system as a whole but that it matters, which
decisions or tasks are completed autonomously by a machine. Therefore,
autonomy needs to be understood and analyzed as an attribute that can be
“attached” to different tasks of a weapon system. This concerns five core func-
tions of weapon systems in particular: mobility, health management, intero-
perability, battlefield intelligence and, finally, the use of force (Boulanin,
2016a, p. 7).
Most critical with respect to the characteristics of autonomy emphasized in
this paper are ISTAR and the use of force, as these functions allow the system
to identify, track, select, and engage targets and to do so without direct human
control at the tactical level. In other words, such a system will be fed with a set
of human-approved operational parameters, within which it may seek out and
attack targets as its AI sees fit, with no need for direct supervision at any point
between the generation of the mission data and the system’s return to base (or,
in the case on an expendable munition, its own destruction upon execution of
an attack). It is systems that are autonomous in this particular sense that will
have the greatest transformative impact on the practice of targeted killings
and it is those systems that we will focus on in the following. The next
section seeks to provide a basic understanding of the technological develop-
ments that are driving the development and future deployment of platforms
and weapons that are autonomous in the performance of their ISTAR and use
of force functions.

Technologies enabling machine autonomy

Although no truly autonomous systems—according to the above definition—
have been introduced so far, the fast pace of technological development is
constantly opening up opportunities for incorporating higher degrees of
autonomy into the different functions of weapon systems. Notably, many
technologies in the field of robotics and computer science that are key in
the creation of autonomy in weapon systems are “dual-use” and driven by
technological developments and applications in the commercial sector, such
as the information and communications or automotive industries (Boulanin,
2016b). The foundation of machine autonomy is AI, which is primarily a
“software endeavor” (Boulanin, 2016a, p. 15; Defense Science Board, 2016).
Broadly defined, “AI is the capability of machines to perform complex tasks
such as decision-making and perception that were normally restricted to
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 287

humans” (Cummings, 2017, p. 2). Thus, in an intelligent system, AI mimics

human cognitive functions in solving specific problems and tasks (Defense
Science Board, 2016). However, a further distinction is often drawn
between “narrow” (or “weak”) and “general” (or “strong”) AI. While
“narrow” AI refers to a system with a distinctly limited range of cognitive abil-
ities, “general” AI denotes the capability to perform a broad range of complex
intellectual tasks (Bostrom, 2014, p. 19). So far, most existing applications of
AI are manifestly “narrow” in nature.
Currently, most software underlying simple applications of AI is still pro-
grammed by humans and follows a rule-based approach. This programming
approach implies that a programmer defines, first, the problems to be solved
by the software and, secondly, how exactly they are to be solved (Russel &
Norvig, 2009). While this approach is suitable for clearly defined tasks in a
context of few unknown variables that can be mathematically described,
such programming is limited by the constrained ability of humans to
model highly complex environments (Boulanin, 2016a). In this regard,
warfare, which is notoriously fraught with complexity and nonlinearity, is a
particularly challenging context. Machine learning provides a possible sol-
ution to these limitations, in that it teaches machines how to adapt to new
“experiences” of their own accord, instead of programming them to “think”
in certain pre-specified ways (Goodfellow, Bengio, & Courville, 2016).
Deep learning, a subtype of machine-learning that is based on artificial
neural networks modeled after the human brain (LeCun, Bengio, & Hinton,
2015), is seen as one of the major technological revolutions that could be deci-
sive in gaining tactical and, perhaps, strategic advantage on future battlefields
(Tucker, 2017). Deep learning would enable machines to navigate and operate
in highly complex environments and anticipate and quickly adapt to a variety
of changing circumstances. These abilities are key in situations where mere
milliseconds in an action–reaction dynamic can make a critical difference
and any mistake—e.g. in the selection of, and attacks upon, human targets
—can have the severest consequences. In this respect, the speedy analysis of
large amounts of data, which far exceeds the abilities of human analysts
(Lewis, 2016; Weisberger, 2017) is of the greatest importance. Where it
enables correct judgments, this glut of processing power could perhaps
even make attacks more discriminatory, thereby minimizing collateral
damage in targeted killing campaigns. The machine-learning algorithms
that underlie such capabilities are trained through the consumption of large
amounts of real-world training data and once deployed, through experience.
In addition to massive computational processing capacity to speed up the
learning process, as well the availability of large amounts and varieties of
data, machine learning also depends on advanced data storage solutions
(Metz, 2017; The Royal Society, 2017).
288 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

Apart from hardware and data requirements, the verification of machine-

learning algorithms constitutes perhaps the most critical challenge in the
development of AWS—one that is particularly relevant in the context of a
targeted killing “mission set.” Although the data input as well as the
output are traceable, the learning process within a neural network is, essen-
tially, a black box. It is therefore extremely difficult to verify what exact
capabilities a system develops, or to predict its resulting behavior with
great certainty (Roff & Singer, 2016). This problem is aggravated once the
system continues to learn on the basis of its own experiential biases,
where inputs can no longer be accurately traced (Defense Science Board,
2016, p. 15). If the capabilities of a system cannot be sufficiently verified,
it would be all but impossible to ensure that it is capable of complying,
for example, with international human rights law away from the battlefield
and the principles of international humanitarian law (IHL) on the battlefield
(Wagner, 2016). Moreover, a responsibility gap in the case of system failure
is inevitable, if neither the manufacturer nor the commander deploying it
can be certain of what exactly the system is capable of at any given
moment (Matthias, 2004).
While AI and machine learning are the most significant technological
developments in creating AWS, they are not sufficient and require additional
“enablers.” Sophisticated sensor technology on board of the system is necess-
ary to collect high-quality data, which can then feed the data analysis process
and serve as a basis for classifying and possibly attacking targets. Sensors are
also required for the navigation of the system in the air, maritime, or land
domains. Finally, to attain intended “kinetic”—i.e. weapons—effects and
avoid unintended effects, a platform must be matched with appropriate ord-
nance, whereas an expendable weapon system must be equipped with a suit-
able warhead. These technologies are not, however, a unique feature of AWS
and could also be used as part of other platforms and weapons.

The political-military drivers of autonomy

Although no state has openly declared an interest in developing AWS along
the lines of our definition (Sauer, 2016), it can be expected that several politi-
cal and military drivers will push the arc of technology development further in
this direction. In its so-called Third Offset Strategy, the U.S. DoD underscored
the key role of robotics in ensuring its military superiority vis-à-vis prospec-
tive military competitors (Department of Defense, 2016). Although Deputy
Secretary of Defense Bob Work has emphasized that the military’s focus
will be primarily on human–machine teaming, or “Centaur Warfare” (Pel-
lerin, 2015), a study by the Future of Life Institute found that technologies
currently under development “increasingly replace, not augment, human
decision-making” (Tucker, 2016).
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 289

While the siren song of “distance, lethality and accuracy” has long been a
motivator of advances in both manned and unmanned airpower, autonomous
weapons offer additional advantages when contrasted with existing UCAVs.
First, operating autonomous systems would allow the military to operate
increased numbers of systems simultaneously, in different areas, with
minimal human involvement at the tactical level (Marchant et al., 2011).
The number of soldiers involved a specific mission executed by autonomous
aerial weapons would decrease dramatically in comparison to missions with
remotely controlled UCAVs, for example with regard to the analysis of battle-
space intelligence that is currently still analyzed by ground elements. Sec-
ondly, the communications infrastructure required to operate remotely
controlled UCAVs is “highly vulnerable to electronic countermeasures or
kinetic attacks on the infrastructure which sustains them” (Sparrow, 2016,
p. 6). Systems that can provide ISTAR and strike targets autonomously are
not dependent on a permanent communications link with a ground crew,
which greatly augments their survivability, especially in contested environ-
ments. Thirdly, given the compressed decision-cycles of advanced AIs in com-
parison with a human decision-maker, autonomous gathering and collation of
battlefield intelligence, as well as algorithm-based data analysis, maneuver and
target selection, could provide crucial tactical and, by extension, strategic
advantages (Lewis, 2016; Weisberger, 2017). Finally, an algorithm-based
analysis of battlefield intelligence as a basis for targeting decisions could
also potentially make strikes more accurate, thereby minimizing collateral
damage and the ensuing public backlash, which would be a highly significant
development in the context of targeted killings.

Autonomous weapons and Western airpower doctrine

The development of autonomous aerial weapons that are able to identify,
track, and attack targets independently of a human operator’s tactical
inputs will come about as a result of a confluence of advances in civilian infor-
mation technology with the political motivation to harness those advances to
create a military advantage. The technical capabilities and limitations of the
systems in question will depend on the degrees of machine autonomy that
political decision-makers, military end users, and systems engineers have
chosen to incorporate in them, as well as a host of other engineering consider-
ations. How a system with given characteristics is actually employed within
the broader context of a military operation is, however, determined by mili-
tary doctrine—“the practical expression of [military] theory” (Corum, 1997,
pp. 2–3)—and by the exact circumstances of the conflict. Like other military
technologies before them, autonomous aerial platforms and weapons will not
be introduced into a military-theoretical vacuum, nor will they completely
change the way in which Western military forces think about aerial warfare.
290 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

The stability of doctrinal preferences

Rather than the AI and hardware components described above, it will be the
military-organizational “software” laid down in doctrinal precepts that will
determine whether or not armed forces will assign autonomous weapons to
the targeted killing “mission set.” The widespread use of autonomous
weapons to kill named, or closely specified, individuals would not be based
solely on the existence of a doctrinal “fit”—that is, the fact that their use is
seen as appropriate and potentially effective within the framework of an estab-
lished paradigm of military operations. It is, however, unlikely that such uses
would occur unless military commanders see a legitimate and effective way of
integrating autonomous weapons into the military-theoretical paradigm that
they are applying to targeted killing operations. And while doctrine is subject
to change, it tends to embody a set of cultural parameters that are fairly stable
over time. In other words, the ways in which force is preferably used tend to
be “culturally regular” (Lewis, 2012, p. 13), or compatible with a military
organization’s ingrained, pre-existing beliefs. Such cultural beliefs tend to
be “semipermanent” (Snyder, 1977, p. v): They may be subject to a slow evol-
ution over time, but they do not fundamentally change every time a new tech-
nology is introduced, or a doctrine updated, no matter how radical the change
may seem.
To provide an extreme example, the United States and the Soviet Union
both integrated nuclear weapons into their pre-existing military-theoretical
belief systems, which changed surprisingly little in the process. The U.S. con-
tinued to adhere to a preferred operational paradigm from the conventional-
only era—strategic bombing—in its nuclear planning (Freedman, 2003,
pp. 21–23; Kaplan, 2015). The Soviet Union intended to use its nuclear
weapons side by side with conventional forces in an all-out drive for
victory by any means possible, which again was commensurable with what
Soviet military commanders already believed (Lee & Staar, 1986, pp. 23–40;
Van Oudenaren, 1986). It was the superpowers’ political-strategic belief
system that was upended by the “thermonuclear revolution,” not their funda-
mental views of how to fight and win a major war, if one were to occur (Jervis,
1989). While it is not strictly impossible, it would seem unlikely that—unlike
the nuclear revolution and a host of other large-scale military innovations—
the transformation of aerial warfare by autonomous weapons would unfold
on a doctrinal “blank slate.”

An ingrained preference for leadership targeting

The approach that undergirds current air power doctrine in the states that
are at the forefront of “normalized” targeted killing—the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Israel—is a blend of several doctrinal traditions that
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 291

have been discussed in considerable detail elsewhere (Olsen, 2015; Pape,

1996, pp. 55–86). Targeted killing belongs to one of these rival clusters of
ideas, known broadly as leadership targeting or “decapitation” (Pape,
1996, pp. 79–86). Leadership targeting is premised on the idea that airpower
is best used against a closely specified elite at the heart of the enemy’s mili-
tary or political organization. In the words of airpower theorist John
Warden, “only at the center can a single input of energy … result in a sig-
nificant change in the enemy system” (1997, p. 175) as a whole. Since the
late 1980s, this preference—which Warden eloquently expressed, but
hardly conjured up from thin air even then—has had a major impact on
Western airpower thinking. Among other things, it has given rise to an elab-
orate paradigm of “effect-based operations,” which was centered on “the
idea that an enemy organization’s ability to operate as desired is ultimately
more important than destruction of the forces it relies on for defense”
(Deptula, 2001, p. 11). While the effects-based operations literature
proper is now seen as passé by many soldiers and experts alike, leadership
targeting principles remain deeply ingrained in the U.S. and U.K. armed
forces (Mattis, 2008).1 The same is true of the Israel Defense Forces,
which made problematic experiences with a hastily implemented “effects-
based” paradigm during the Second Lebanon War (Kober, 2008, pp. 32–
33), but has maintained an active program of targeted killings both before
and since (Bergman, 2018).
Like all forms of leadership decapitation, targeted killing programs in the
“war on terror” have rested on the optimistic assumption that terrorist and
insurgent networks are hierarchical, centralized, and structured enough to
allow attackers “to seriously degrade important enemy functions” (Joint
Chiefs of Staff, 2013, p. I–8) in a fairly precise and selective manner. Like
all forms of decapitation by airpower, these campaigns sought to disrupt ter-
rorist or insurgent organizations, and perhaps change their internal strategic
calculus, by killing off their named, or closely specified, leadership cadres
(Hardy & Lushenko, 2012; Johnston, 2012; Jordan, 2009; Price, 2012).
The overall experience of Western armed forces with this approach has
been decidedly mixed. The sustained nature of these recent campaigns
would seem to demonstrate that the direct impact of eliminating named oper-
atives has been limited and fleeting and that pressure must be constantly
maintained through additional strikes. In fact, it has even been argued that
the organizational impact on terrorist groups may be counterproductive
from the attacker’s perspective (Boyle, 2013; Jordan, 2009, p. 723, 2014a,
2014b). The overall picture of limited effectiveness would seem to be corrobo-
rated by classified materials that have been leaked into the public domain
(The Intercept, 2015).
292 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

Targeted killings in future war

Any significant improvement of the technological base on which recent tar-
geted killing campaigns have rested has the potential to fuel their evolution
and further use. Even fairly routine technological advances—e.g. in the
areas of sensor capabilities or ordnance—could render the initiation or con-
tinuation of a campaign more palatable to political decision-makers. In the
following section, we look well beyond the effects of such incremental
changes, however, and ask whether the confluence of targeted killings and
autonomy could break the mold and lead to normalized application of this
problematic means of warfare in contexts far beyond the militarized
counter-terrorism response of the past two decades. Specifically, we will
look at the potential of targeted killing practices to take hold in high-intensity,
conventional and lower-intensity, hybrid conflict scenarios.

Targeted killing and future “conventional” conflicts

As we have emphasized above, the leading exponents of “normalized” tar-
geted killing among Western democracies have already embraced doctrinal
frameworks that allow for and, indeed, emphasize leadership targeting in a
range of warfare settings. The overall trend in targeted killings over the last
several decades has clearly been toward expansion. While the great majority
of operations were directed against non-state adversaries, it should not be for-
gotten that the decapitation approach was originally developed with state
actors in mind (Pape, 1996, p. 79). The United States had employed leadership
targeting against more traditional adversaries long before it applied a funda-
mentally analogous and commensurate set of ideas against al-Qaeda. The tar-
geting of high leadership cadres, up to and including the head of government,
was an integral part of U.S. military strategy in both Operation Desert Storm
(1991) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). In fact, in March 2003, a contro-
versial decapitation strike against Saddam Hussein was executed more or less
spontaneously, even before the planned commencement of hostilities (Wood-
ward, 2004, pp. 384–294). Nor was the Iraqi dictator the only foreign head of
government who was specifically targeted by the U.S. and its allies. Muammar
Gaddafi narrowly escaped U.S. air strikes on one of his residences during
Operations El Dorado Canyon (1986). Twenty-five years later, during Oper-
ation Odyssey Dawn (2011), the Libyan leader had no such luck and was
killed by Western-backed rebels in the immediate aftermath of North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) air strikes on his convoy (BBC, 2011). Hence,
the U.S. (and some of its NATO allies) have not only conducted targeted kill-
ings outside conflict zones, in a normative vacuum that government lawyers
have worked hard to fill (with limited success). It has also struck across inter-
national borders, against the leadership cadres of sovereign nations.
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 293

Similar leadership decapitation concepts are also being explored by

advanced, Western-style military powers outside the NATO context. South
Korea has publicly stated a leadership targeting doctrine vis-à-vis the
nuclear-armed North. The South Korean military is currently bringing its
Hyunmoo-3 cruise missile online with this approach in mind (Reuters,
2013; “South Korean plan to kill Kim,” 2016). While the primary purpose
of this shift is almost certainly enhanced conventional deterrence (Mearshei-
mer, 1985, pp. 23–66), it is apparent that the introduction of advanced means
of attack can make such offensive doctrinal frameworks politically palatable to
second-tier regional powers as well. While it is not clear that the proliferation
of autonomous aerial weapons would follow a pattern that is comparable to
cruise missiles, a relatively slow spread to the close allies of leading military
powers is a plausible scenario. Another actor that has routinely targeted
enemy leadership personnel across international boundaries is Israel.
Because these attacks, including Operation Wooden Leg (1985) against the
PLO headquarters in Tunis and the systematic leveling of Hezbollah’s head-
quarters in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood in 2006 (Lambeth, 2011, pp. 154–
157), were directed primarily against non-state organizations, they did not
infringe on the sovereignty of the states in question in quite the same way
as a targeted killing attempt against their political or military leaders. None-
theless, it is apparent that the boundaries between targeted killings against
non-state actors and interstate conflict are far from absolute.
We believe that the prospect of autonomous aerial weapons being
employed for targeted killing purposes in future interstate conflicts of a
fairly “conventional” nature is far from implausible. In many such conflicts,
the targeting priorities of advanced Western air forces would include striking
a range of leadership targets, perhaps including named or closely specified
individuals. While this would not necessarily amount to a shadowy targeted
killing campaign, it is not difficult to imagine, in the course of a conflict
between the world’s most advanced militaries, a “normalization” of individua-
lized micro-targeting of key personnel and vital command cells, enabled by
highly advanced sensors, data fusion, and discriminate ordnance. Given
that the targeting of military leadership in wartime is not considered
beyond the pale even under current norms, “big data” collection by ISTAR
assets, military intelligence, and human intelligence sources on the ground
could lay the groundwork for such a campaign even in peacetime or during
a crisis.
Autonomous aerial weapons could have many potential advantages in such
scenarios. Most importantly, they would be much more survivable than non-
autonomous unmanned systems in environments that feature a technologi-
cally capable adversary, who is able to locate and exploit the electronic emis-
sions of the platform’s data links, to which an “in-the-loop” or “on-the-loop”
human controller must have periodic recourse, or attack it with weaponry that
294 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

requires extremely fast reaction times to defend against. At the same time,
autonomous aerial systems would also feature much greater endurance
than manned systems. The advantages of autonomy are, therefore, likely to
be most pronounced where there is a need to operate deep inside an advanced
defensive perimeter for extended periods of time (Erhard & Work, 2008,
pp. 147–227; Scharre, 2014, pp. 20–22). In those circumstances, we would
expect that autonomous weapons would be a preferred means of executing
counter-leadership strikes, including targeted killings.

The prospect of “hybrid” warfare

Russia’s invasion of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, and its enduring engage-
ment in Eastern Ukraine, have given rise to another line of threat perceptions,
which could incentivize the exploitation of emerging technological capabili-
ties and move the targeted killing debate further beyond the now-familiar
context of the “war on terror.” Hybrid—also known as nonlinear or sub-con-
ventional—warfare has been traditionally associated with asymmetric con-
flicts, where weaker parties, such as Hezbollah in the 2006 war against
Israel, use a peculiar blend of strategies, technologies, and tactics not
usually associated with non-state actors to counter the conventional superior-
ity of their adversary (Deep, 2015). Targeted killings have been a prominent
feature of some such conflicts (Bachmann, 2013).
Although hybrid warfare is not a new concept, and has been more widely
used than the current debate would suggest (Freedman, 2014), it remains con-
tested and no commonly agreed definition exists in the scholarly community.
However, common denominators of existing definitions are that “hybrid
warfare” blurs the dividing lines between the binary order of war and peace
and create an “in-between” gray zone involving a spectrum of violence.
Adversaries “exploit the full spectrum of warfare” by blending conventional,
irregular and cyber warfare to weaken the stronger party and to avoid attribu-
tion and retribution (Pindjak, 2015). Hence, what is challenging about hybrid
warfare is not so much the means themselves but how they are recombined in
often ruthless and unexpected ways within a given battlespace (Hoffman,
2007). Such disparate combinations of tactics pose a major challenge to tra-
ditional militaries, as they require the flexible and rapid adoption of counter-
vailing approaches and objectives.
In the course of the Ukraine crisis, Russia has undermined a normative
order based on established international law and created such a gray zone
conflict along its external borders with the NATO. By deploying a blend of
tactics that are “coercive and aggressive in nature” but “remain below the
threshold of conventional military conflict and open interstate war”
(Brands, 2016, p. 1), Russia has triggered a difficult quest for appropriate
and effective responses to a “hybrid” threat within a fairly traditional,
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 295

interstate setting (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 2016; Zapfe, 2016). It

is likely that advanced Western militaries will continue to encounter the use of
such methods in the future.
We would argue that in the light of several of the challenges that emerge
from hybrid tactics for traditional militaries, the use of autonomous aerial
weapon systems could be perceived as attractive in future sub-conventional
wars. State actors faced with “hybrid” tactics by an asymmetrical adversary
may be tempted into deploying already existing UCAVs for reasons no
more complicated than their availability and cost-effectiveness, whether
their opponent also employs them or not. We would go beyond this assess-
ment, however, and argue that the use of hybrid warfare tactics in interstate
conflict could serve as an additional incentive for states to use targeted killings
by means of AWS.
Micro-targeting of leadership personnel in a fuzzy environment, where
misinformation is deliberately proliferated, would require a technological
base that provides sufficiently precise information to identify appropriate
targets and to execute such strikes. In this regard, an intentional information
overload created by hybrid methods will create even greater challenges for
data analysts than has been the case in recent asymmetric wars. In order to
cope with this growing challenge, machine learning algorithms integrated
in aerial (and other) platforms could be much quicker at extracting relevant
information. Moreover, the complexity of—and alternation between—dispa-
rate tactics in hybrid warfare could further augment the importance of speedy
decision-making and a capacity to act before the parameters of the next move
once again begin to shift, along with the fluid situation on the ground.
The autonomous identification, selection, and attack of targets could also
be more discriminatory than strikes with existing UCAVs. Machine-learning
algorithms supported by advanced sensors could not only analyze vast
amounts of data more accurately and quickly but also “gather information
that will enhance the reliability of identification and permit target engagement
when the target is relatively isolated” (Schmitt, 2013, p. 11). Thus, in a sub-
conventional scenario, targeted killings with autonomous aerial weapons
could be seen as a forceful response against vital elements of the enemy’s mili-
tary organization, without causing excessive collateral damage. Attacking lea-
dership targets in-theatre could also be perceived as a viable and effective
alternative to an expansion of the conflict into the heartland of an aggressive
state opponent, which might entail even greater escalatory potential.
Moreover, the nature of AWS, which allows militaries to carry out mis-
sions without having to put “boots on the ground” and burdening soldiers
with the psychological impact of killings through remote control (Dao,
2013), further simplifies the enduring involvement in “gray zone conflicts”
for the states deploying them. In addition, unmarked AWS, which can
operate without communications link to a ground crew, provide an even
296 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

greater level of ambiguity as to the exact nature of such an involvement than

existing UCAVs and would complicate the attribution of targeted killings.
This modus operandi, which could be employed both by an attacker and
by a determined status-quo power, could create a climate of pervasive
uncertainty and fear far beyond the front lines, thereby weakening and
demoralizing enemy leaders and populations alike—a likely hallmark of
future hybrid operations.
Lastly, in the “war on terror,” the use of UCAVs for targeted killings was
enabled by the uncontested nature of the airspace involved (Chamayou,
2015). In a sub-conventional scenario, this condition might no longer be a
given. Adversaries with the capabilities to launch electronic or kinetic
attacks on a detected system in their airspace will do so to inhibit the gather-
ing sensitive information and carrying out of attacks (Sparrow, 2016). Like in
the high-intensity conventional scenarios discussed above, the successful use
of targeted killings in a sub-conventional scenario could therefore ultimately
depend on the deployment of autonomous aerial systems, due to their
improved survivability vis-à-vis remotely controlled UCAVs.

Scope for regulation

While ongoing regulation efforts on the international level are not necessarily
doomed to fail, we expect that they will have only limited impact for the fore-
seeable future, thus leaving it largely to individual state actors to implement
restraints in their respective policies and practices with regard to autonomous
targeted killings.
Following an influential campaign by a coalition of civil society organiz-
ations, states took up the issue of AWS in 2013 under the United Nations
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). The CCW provides
a framework to restrict or ban new types of weapons that are considered
“to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civi-
lians indiscriminately” (UN Office Geneva, 2017). It is unlikely, however, that
in the near future, a concrete treaty solution, whether a ban or regulatory
treaty governing the further development and deployment of AWS, will
evolve from this process. After three years, the process is still at an early
stage and the outcome remains uncertain. So far, the parties to the CCW
have not been able to agree on a common definition of what constitutes an
AWS and are therefore still in the process of understanding the subject
under discussion. Moreover, competing narratives on what regulatory
approach would be most suitable have already emerged, even though the offi-
cial negotiations have yet to begin (Dunn Cavelty, Fischer, & Balzacq, 2016).
The consensus principle of the CCW will further complicate an agreement in
this forum. Lastly, the “dual-use” character of many technologies relevant to
autonomous weapons makes a preventive treaty on AWS difficult, as,
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 297

depending on its design, such a document could also affect many avenues of
technological development in the commercial sphere.
On the national level, the U.S. was the first country to outline a policy on
“Autonomy in Weapon Systems” in DoD Directive 3000.09 in 2012. In
essence, the directive permits the development and use of fully AWS for
the use of non-lethal force but requires that a human always be “in-the-
loop” when decisions involving lethal force are taken (Department of
Defense, 2012). Although the directive has been welcomed as the “world’s
first moratorium on lethal fully autonomous weapons,” it has also drawn
strong criticism (Human Rights Watch, 2012). For example, while the
current directive underscores the obligation to verify, test, and validate a
system prior to deployment, these traditional procedures may simply not
work for self-learning systems, as already discussed in the first section of
the article (Roff & Singer, 2016). Moreover, the policy established in the direc-
tive can be overridden by high officials and is valid for only 10 years, if not
renewed within the first five years (Department of Defense, 2012). Thus,
the requirements established by the directive as well as the rapidly advancing
technology development will leave it to the American president Donald
Trump—and the leaders of other nations—to determine the further develop-
ment and potential areas of deployment for AWS—including targeted killings.

Military advantage versus operational control

While it may sound somewhat paradoxical at first glance, a second—and
potentially rather significant—barrier to a full-scale, widespread deployment
of autonomous aerial weapons for targeted killings could be a set of counter-
vailing military imperatives. This comes down to a critical question that has
not been a subject of an extensive debate so far: What are practical advantages
and disadvantages of the operational use of autonomous weapons for military
commanders?
In our examination of this question, we proceed from two assumptions.
The first assumption is that commanders will seek to leverage the advantages
of autonomy vis-à-vis manned and non-autonomous unmanned systems:
increased speed of tactical decision-making, better survivability due to
faster reaction times, and the absence of vulnerable data links. The second
assumption is that military organizations—network-centric ones, in particu-
lar—tend to have a strong preference for close operational supervision of
frontline forces (Vego, 2004) and that commanders will be reluctant to sur-
render control over sensitive operations.
In addition, we believe that the military value of autonomy is likely to be
greatest where the maintenance of human supervision imposes a serious oper-
ational burden that may outweigh the perceived disadvantages of surrender-
ing direct operational control. As outlined above, this burden will be greatest
298 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

in conflicts that feature advanced conventional defenses that put a premium

on high levels of survivability and endurance. The compelling advantages of
autonomy would increase more or less in proportion to the density and capa-
bility of the defensive dispositions in question. They would be greatest in a
scenario involving a fellow great power with highly advanced military
forces (Friedberg, 2014, pp. 73–84).
Meanwhile, the preference for tightly centralized command arrangements
is bound to be strongest in those operations that are most politically sensitive
or potentially escalatory, and therefore need to be authorized at the highest
levels of government. Recent targeted killings of high-ranking terrorist
leaders, most prominently Operation Neptune’s Spear against Osama Bin
Laden, provide excellent examples of this. As a result, we believe that
advanced Western military forces’ “command philosophies” (Sloan, 2012,
pp. 246–250)—which are culturally ingrained and therefore “semiperma-
nent,” just like their doctrinal preferences—will militate against the employ-
ment of autonomous weapons, which require surrendering human control,
in some types of targeted killing scenarios.
The resistance is likely to be greatest in the most sensitive and potentially
escalatory scenarios—which would certainly include targeted killings against
high-level personnel across international borders that may in some circum-
stances involve the potential for escalation to the nuclear level. The resistance
will probably be lowest in “routine” targeted killing operations against non-
state actors that do not involve a serious infringement on state sovereignty.
Because the utility of autonomy would be greatest in interstate warfare
against another advanced military force and comparatively low in counter-
terrorism operations, where survivability and immediate reaction to techno-
logically advanced threats are not a priority, command philosophy is a
likely counterweight to the spillover of “normalized” targeted killing into
the interstate conventional and hybrid realms.

The future of targeted killings and international (dis)order

In the above, we have outlined why we believe a changing technological base,
the doctrinal preferences of Western armed forces, and the increasing promi-
nence of sub-conventional and, perhaps, conventional conflict scenarios are
likely to lead to an expansion of targeted killing practices. But how would
the expansion of targeted killing practices beyond the “global war on
terror,” as charted above, affect the existing international order?
In the introduction to this special issue, Senn and Troy (2017) draw an
important distinction between the behavioral and institutional dimensions
of the international order, which are in a dialectical relationship. Whereas
the first dimension is marked by “a relatively stable and thus recognizable
and predictable pattern of agents’ behavior or its outcomes,” the latter includes
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 299

a “set of institutions that emerges from the needs of agents within a social
system” (p. 181). The effects of events on both dimensions of the international
order can, however, only be understood in the interplay of pre-existing struc-
tures and institutions. Therefore, an outlook as to how the possible prolifer-
ation of targeted killings could affect the international order can only be
provided against the background of the normative status quo, which the
transformation of targeted killings has begun to reshape. We would argue
that this already burdened normative context may not be entirely transformed
by the increasing use of targeted killings beyond the “global war on terror,”
but that current concerns about the durability of the “old” order will
almost certainly be reinforced.
In the context of military counter-terrorism operations, a number of scho-
lars have studied the impact of targeted killing practices on the institutional
dimension of the international order and especially the transformation of
pre-existing norms on targeted killing. Fisk and Ramos (2013), for example,
have argued that the frequent and unconstrained use of targeted killings
has already initiated the development of a new norm on the preventive use
of force. This newly emerging norm will likely be strengthened by the prolifer-
ation of targeted killings into conventional and sub-conventional scenarios
and their expanded use by a broader variety of actors. Adding targeted killings
to the legitimate “mission set” in interstate conflicts is also likely to further
erode the previously existing anti-assassination norm (Thomas, 2005).
The official justification for the use of force by states, especially when using
hitherto unconventional means, can play a key role in the process of trans-
forming the international order (Senn & Troy, 2017, p. 176). In this regard,
state actors could start to actively refer to the rising norm, or simply to the
erosion of the previous one, in order to justify the use of targeted killings
across a broad range of strategic contexts. While we believe that the advan-
tages provided by AWS are most pronounced in conflicts between highly
sophisticated adversaries, their use for targeted killing purposes in those scen-
arios would be a matter of great concern.
For example, at this stage of technology development, it is still difficult to
foresee whether AWS will ever be able to comply with principles of IHL on the
battlefield including proportionality of the use of force and the distinction
between combatants and noncombatants. Moreover, it remains unclear
whether—and if so how—individual criminal responsibility for breaches of
IHL through autonomous systems could be established, given the opaqueness
of algorithms that would make the critical decisions (Wagner, 2016). It is
therefore possible that their deployment for targeted killing missions in a
broad variety of strategic contexts could significantly weaken some of the
foundational pillars of IHL and thereby begin to further erode the institutional
dimension of the international order.
300 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

Moreover, we believe that an expansion of targeted killings as a result of the

availability of autonomous aerial weapons could significantly lower the
threshold for the initiation and pursuit of long-lasting gray zone conflicts,
with the potential for escalation from sub-conventional into large-scale con-
ventional wars. As a consequence of such scenarios, targeted killings could
eventually also affect the behavioral dimension of the international order,
challenging and perhaps changing some established and relatively predictable
patterns of behavior between state actors.

Conclusions
Our main findings in this article have been twofold. First, we expect that the
move toward machine autonomy in aerial weapon systems, which is already a
prominent trend in military technology, is likely to offer a limited, but signifi-
cant, set of advantages to actors engaging in targeted killings. As far as
advanced Western militaries are concerned, there is a reason to believe that
these systems will be integrated into a pre-existing doctrinal framework
that emphasize leadership targeting and that has—in many cases, over the
past 15–20 years—found its expression in a propensity for targeted killings.
It is also likely that the advantages provided by autonomous aerial weapons
will be greatest in conflicts that involve capable opponents with considerable
expertise in areas including electronic warfare and air defense.
As a result, we believe that the possibility of targeted killing campaigns
taking place in either conventional or sub-conventional (“hybrid”) settings
involving state actors—or, perhaps, an idiosyncratic mix of state and non-
state actors—are real and should not be underestimated. To the extent that
this expectation is borne out by future conflicts, machine autonomy will con-
tribute to a further expansion of targeted killings and to their spread beyond
military counter-terrorism operations in the non-state context. In other
words, we would contend that the spread of autonomous aerial weapons
will likely lead to a significant increase in the scope and incidence of targeted
killings in the international system. We also argue that the development of
regulatory measures that could hinder or contain the development and
deployment of autonomous weapons technologies is unlikely in the foresee-
able future, leaving it largely to individual state actors to decide how to use
them.
At the same time, we believe that the motivations for the use of such
systems will have to compete with countervailing political-military motiv-
ations, which result from the ingrained command philosophies of Western-
style armed forces and continue to emphasize tight hierarchical control
over highly sensitive operations. “Autonomous” aerial warfare, in other
words, will remain subject to direct military and political control at the oper-
ational and strategic levels, even where adherence to international—and
 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY 301

perhaps even domestic—norms is not seen as a priority. As a result, the above-

mentioned effects of the introduction of machine autonomy into the equation
of “normalized” targeted killings may be mitigated to some extent by the mili-
tary and political context within which they are embedded. Overall, then, we
would expect both a further muddling of the normative framework of the
current international order, within which targeted killings would take place,
and the persistence of some significant elements of restraint in their future
application.

Note
1. We believe that the U.S. approach to targeted killing under the Obama admin-
istration was very much in line with this basic military-theoretical paradigm,
notwithstanding the fact that civilian National Security Council staff and the
Central Intelligence Agency attained an outsized influence over the specific
process by which leadership targeting principles were applied in a particular
set of circumstances (Carvin, 2012; McNeal, 2014). Early indications point
toward a less centralized procedural approach under the Trump administration
(Jaffe & DeYoung, 2017).

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Martin Senn and Jodok Troy for their extensive feed-
back and support in preparing this article. They would also like to thank Martin Zapfe
and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions, which have resulted in a
much-improved version of the original manuscript.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Michael Carl Haas is a researcher in the Global Security team at the Center for Secur-
ity Studies at ETH and a doctoral student at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel
University. His interests include modern air and missile power, the proliferation of
advanced conventional weapons, and the management of future interstate military
crises. His recent, policy-focused writings have been published inter alia in the
RUSI Journal, The Diplomat and The National Interest.
Sophie-Charlotte Fischer is a PhD candidate at the Center for Security Studies at ETH.
Prior to her PhD studies, she held a Mercator Fellowship on International Affairs. Her
research focuses on the strategic implications of emerging military and dual-use tech-
nologies, contemporary arms control practices and technology policy. Her recent
publications include a co-authored book chapter on the regulation of AWS in the
Routledge Handbook of Security Studies.
302 M. C. HAAS AND S.-C. FISCHER

ORCID
Michael Carl Haas http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6744-7734
Sophie-Charlotte Fischer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8977-2423

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