Question

Suppose that the U.S. military deploys the X-47B, an unmanned aerial drone capable of sensing, tracking, identifying, targeting, and destroying an enemy target with very limited human oversight—assume it is a human-on­-the-loop weapon. As a weapon in the ongoing conflict with the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist organization, X-47B is tasked with missions to target and kill senior ISIS operatives. Now imagine a particular mission, in which an X-47B is given a programmed mission to carry out a targeted strike on two ISIS operatives, call them ‘V’ and ‘Z’, whom surveillance reports indicate are currently located in northern Iraq near the Turkish border. According to reliable intelligence, V and Z are instrumental in planning and leading operations to ransack, pillage, and then demolish world historical sites in Iraq (e.g. Khorsabad, Nergal Gate at Nineveh, and Monastery of St. Elijah), looting priceless antiquities and smuggling them to be sold on black markets in Europe and Asia, in order to generate capital to fund ISIS’s continued armed insurgency [for more on this particular practice, see Harkin, “Murdering History,” Smithsonian, March 2016]. V and Z are thereby deemed legitimate and high-value military targets. They are also elusive, with fairly sophisticated clandestine methods for relocating and evading detection; finding their present location required substantial surveillance drone resources over the course of several months.

Further suppose, that you are also in northern Iraq in a village near the Turkish border, working for a humanitarian aid organization providing healthcare services to Kurdish people whose communities have been ravaged and infrastructure degraded by ISIS. Part of your duties involve going out into local villages to distribute medical supplies and provide support services at community centers. Your team is primarily composed of American, British, and German nurses and doctors. Today, you are at one such community center providing care and supplies to hundreds of civilians. In a building 200 meters from the center in which you are working, V and Z are plotting another raid on a nearby historical site. The X-47B has accurately tracked and identified the location of V and Z, it also recognizes that the nearby community center contains many innocent non-combatants. Nevertheless, X-47B calculates that launching a precise and limited strike on V and Z’s suspected location will only produce a blast radius of no more than 75 meters, and determines that the identified non-combatants are not likely to be harmed. After computing its decision-procedure algorithm, X-47B fixes its target and initiates a missile strike to complete its mission, and no human overrides its lethal decision. V and Z are immediately killed, but the building was also housing several tons of explosives used in their demolition of historical sites. X-47B’s calculations did not account for the unknown explosives, which extend the blast radius of the strike to 225 meters. A wing of the community center collapses from the force of the blast, killing 15 civilians and one American nurse on your team, many others are severely injured and a British doctor is trapped under some of the rubble. After overcoming the initial disorientation from the blast, you and your remaining team rush to minimize casualties and treat the civilian victims.

[5 pts.] Was X-47B justified in initiating the missile strike to eliminate V and Z? Why or why not? Use principles of distinction, proportionality, or military necessity invoked in international humanitarian law governing armed conflict to defend your position.

[5 pts.] Who should be held morally responsible for the unintended harms and casualties? As a witness to the atrocity and possible victim, in this hypothetical case, how do you propose that the U.S. military should respond to the consequences of the X-47B’s strike? Defend your position.

Answer 1

Yes, X-47B was justified in initiating the missile attack except one factor that it wasn’t built or programmed to sense the explosives in the area of attack which is a human error. When using the international humanitarian law governing armed conflict, distinction is to differentiate civilians and combatants which the drone did, proportionality is minimum harm to civilians which the drone thought was almost zero except the fact that it couldn’t identify the explosives which later caused the death of the civilians and finally military necessity invoked was completely justified because once the funding is stopped the operation will stop and once the brain is dead the body won’t function. In this case eliminating V and Z was very crucial in stopping the operations of ISIS.

The military that sent the drone for attack should be held responsible because drone is after all a machine which cannot act on its own. It only executes the priorities and operations set for it to act. The manufacturer cannot be held responsible because the manufacturer fulfills the requirements of the customers, in this place the military. The military should make sure it modifies the conditions in the drone so that it accomplishes all the requirements before the attack.