1. Q: What is the Ultimate Goal in Warfare?
John S. Canning
Retired
(540) 775-7071
johnscanning@earthlink.net

2. A: “The Ultimate Goal in warfare is not to
kill the enemy, but to bring hostilities to a
complete and lasting close as quickly, and
as humanely, as possible.”
Hayes Parks, OSD Office of General Counsel (retired), 23 Sep 2003

3. This is not a new thought:
“It is not the object of war to annihilate those who have given provocation for it, but
to cause them to mend their ways.”
Polybius, Greek Historian (2nd century B.C.), “The Histories”

4. Why, then, do we focus so much on
producing systems that kill people?
Mostly, this is because this is what the “state of the art” in weapons technology has
allowed us to do to this point.

5. The desire to pursue the “Ultimate Goal”
has never been lost, but it has been heavily
masked by our weapons systems
developments, based on “the technology
of the day.”
As proof of this, one has only to pick up a copy of the current DoD “Law of War”
manual, dated June 2015, and note the permeating emphasis on the reduction of
“collateral damage” in conducting strikes.

6. Technology developments applicable to
armed autonomous unmanned systems
will turn our perceptions around, and let us
begin to fully embrace this “Ultimate
Goal.”
Note that DoD Directive 3000.09, “Autonomy in Weapon Systems,” Nov 2012, begins
this by stating “…autonomous weapon systems may be used to select and
engage targets, with the exception of selecting humans as targets…”
This begins to address the “Principle of Distinction” that is part of the Law of War, in
that our robotic systems must not autonomously target people. (No “Killer
Robots!”)
This does NOT mean that there is no possibility of “collateral damage,” which could
include human casualties and injuries.
We just are not directly targeting people.

7. Besides the Principle of Distinction, the
Law of War also embraces the Principles of
Proportionality, and Precautions.
Most authors examining the Principle of Proportionality today wrongly conclude that it
is too complex, and context-sensitive, for an autonomous robot to tackle.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has published CJCSI 3160.01A, “No-Strike and
the Collateral Damage Estimation Methodology,” Oct 2012, that breaks the
proportionality issue into two halves: (1) Is the determination of how much
collateral damage is acceptable. (2) Is the determination of how much collateral
damage can be expected.
This instruction defines the “Non-combatant and Civilian Casualty Cut-off Value
(“NCV”) to tackle the first, and notes that it is set by the President of the United
States, or the SECDEF if authorized by the President. This is an EXTERNAL input to
our armed autonomous robots.
The second half is being conducted today by well-established means, with computer
code having already been written in many cases. This can be done by our armed
autonomous robots, and compared to the NCV to see if a target should be struck,
or not.

8. The Principle of Precautions goes beyond
what is required by the Principle of
Proportionality of just meeting the NCV,
and requires that we reduce the amount of
expected collateral damage to a minimum.
Again, this sort of strike planning is ongoing today with a lot of computer code to do
this already having been generated. There is no reason why this can’t be done by
an armed autonomous robot.

9. Collateral Damage Methodology Flowchart
from CJCSI 3160.01A, “No-Strike and the Collateral Damage Estimation Methodology”

10. “…Meaningful Human Control…”
• The last meeting in Geneva of the Convention for Certain Conventional Weapons
(CCW) focused attention on the need to maintain “…meaningful human control…”
over armed, autonomous machines.
• We would submit that this needs to be done in the following areas:
– Approved target signatures database
• A human operator will have to decide what signatures, either individually, or in what
combinations, will adequately ID a legitimate target.
– Setting of the "Non-combatant and Civilian Casualty Cutoff Value“ (NCV).
• This is the measure of how much collateral damage the National Command Structure (starting
at the top with the President) will tolerate.
– Approved "no-strike" list
• The list of, and description of, items that must not be struck. These can include cultural heritage
sites, hospitals, places of worship, and others.
– Definition of the area in which combat operations are to take place, and the rules for
conducting combat operations within those areas.
• This will include things like the ROE.

11. Impact from Customary International
Law (CIL) & Treaties
The reactions we get from people to briefs of this sort fall into
one of two categories, there does not seem to be any
“middle ground”:
(1) “I never thought of it that way before.”
(2) “This is ridiculous, we need to autonomously kill the enemy.”
Along with the latter is usually the conviction that laws for
conducting future wars will be written by the “winners.”
What they tend to miss is the fact that the current “Law Of
War” was written by the “winners,” and includes
considerations from treaties we’ve signed and from CIL.
You may not like it, but this is the direction we are moving in.

12. Summary
• The Ultimate Goal in warfare is not to kill the enemy, but to bring
hostilities to a complete and lasting close as quickly, and as
humanely, as possible.
• The “state of the art” in past weapons technology has not really
allowed us to do to this.
• But the Law Of War has maintained a focus on the reduction of
collateral damage that continually drives us in that direction.
• Technology developments applicable to armed autonomous
unmanned systems will let us begin to fully embrace this “Ultimate
Goal.”
• CJCSI 3160.01A shows us the way forward through the Law Of
War’s Principles of Distinction, Proportionality, and Precautions.
• We can do this while maintaining “…meaningful human control…”,
and meeting our CIL and treaty requirements.
We are NOT designing “Killer Robots.”