A combat robot is a robot with a military purpose. The class encompasses remotely controllable, semi-autonomous, and fully autonomous systems — air, ground, sea, underwater. In the decade from 2015 to 2025, the combat drone as a category of weapon profoundly transformed the core of modern warfare. Since 2020 — through documented deployments in North Africa and in the war in Ukraine — lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) have likewise become a military reality.
Types (anonymized description)
Remotely controllable systems (human-in-the-loop):
- Long-range unmanned aerial vehicles of US manufacture; manned cockpit in a central control station, weapons release exclusively by a human operator.
- Turkish medium-range combat drones, deployed in several regional conflicts since 2020.
Semi-autonomous systems (human-on-the-loop):
- US loitering munitions with autonomous navigation and object recognition; selection and release by a human operator.
- Russian loitering munitions with AI-assisted target recognition and image classification, deployed in the war in Ukraine.
Fully autonomous systems (human-out-of-the-loop, LAWS):
- A Turkish quadcopter loitering drone which, according to the UN Panel of Experts (S/2021/229), was engaged against human beings in Libya in 2020 in a “fire-forget-find” logic without human authorization — the first publicly known deployment of an autonomous lethal weapon of this kind. The manufacturer disputes the classification.
- A Ukrainian quadcopter drone which, in the autumn of 2023, according to reports by the BBC and New Scientist, carried out the first documented autonomous AI lethal strike in the history of warfare.
Personalist-ontological assessment
Personalist ontology does not forbid war as such (cf. the just-war tradition from Aquinas to Grisez), but it insists unconditionally that every lethal effect correspond to a decision attributable to a person. This demand is grounded in three propositions:
- Responsibility is personal. Only persons can bear responsibility, because they possess freedom, conscience, and reason.
- Killing is a moral act. The ending of personal life is a qualitatively different action from the elimination of a target. It demands the perception of the person to be killed as a person.
- Delegation of responsibility violates the dignity of the person. When the judgment to kill is delegated to a system that cannot be a person, the victim is no longer killed as a someone, but classified as a something and eliminated. This is precisely the structure characterized by the oblivion of the person.
Sparrow described the practical consequence with precision: a responsibility gap — that is, a structure without a personal addressee of the killing — violates the jus in bello.
The current regulatory situation
- UN GGE on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (since 2014, within the framework of the CCW).
- UN General Assembly, First Committee, 6 November 2025: Resolution against LAWS — 164 in favor, 6 against (Belarus, Burundi, North Korea, Israel, Russia, USA), 7 abstentions. Secretary-General Guterres calls for a binding instrument of international law prohibiting fully autonomous lethal weapons by the end of 2026.
- 7th CCW Review Conference 2026 — decisive negotiation date.
- EU AI Act (2024/1689) — Art. 2(3) exempts military applications, but member states may enact stricter national rules.
- International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC 2021): recommendation for a legally binding instrument that prohibits certain LAWS and strictly regulates others.
Ontological classification
Superclasses: Robot
Subclasses: Combat Drone, Lethal Autonomous Weapon System
Typical degrees of autonomy: all four levels (human-in-the-loop to fully autonomous)
Chapter assignment: Chapter 5: Oblivion of the Person
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Sparrow, Robert (2007): “Killer Robots.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 24(1), pp. 62–77.
- United Nations Panel of Experts on Libya (2021): Final Report S/2021/229 (documents autonomous drone deployment without human authorization).
- International Committee of the Red Cross (2021): ICRC position on autonomous weapon systems.
- United Nations General Assembly First Committee (2025): Resolution on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, 6 November 2025.
- United Nations Secretary-General (2023): A New Agenda for Peace, Policy Brief 9 (call for a prohibition of LAWS by 2026).
- Heyns, Christof (2013): Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Lethal autonomous robotics and the protection of life. UN Doc. A/HRC/23/47.
- Article 36 (NGO) (2018 and subsequent updates): Key Areas for Debate on Autonomous Weapons Systems.
- Bode, Ingvild / Watts, Tom (2023): Loitering Munitions and Unpredictability: Autonomy in Weapon Systems and Challenges to Human Control. Center for War Studies Research Report.
- BBC News (2023): reporting on autonomous drone deployments in the war in Ukraine.
- New Scientist (2023): reporting on AI-assisted target-selection systems in the war in Ukraine.