Disarmament and International Security 

     Lethal autonomous weapons systems are those weapons that can detect, select, and engage targets with little to no human intervention. There is not a universal definition that expresses exactly whether a weapon system classifies as LAWS or not. 

   Single out fully autonomous systems, the so called “killer robots”. Automatically-Triggered lethal weapons have been around since the 1600s with the use of landmines and in the 1700s naval mines were also introduced. By 1997 many lethal weapons including antipersonnel mines were banned, except in the US, Russia and certain regions of Asia and the Middle East. 

     Critics of the system question the capability of such machines to respect human life and abide by international humanitarian law. Other sources claim the use of these systems may help in augmenting warfare to better defend international humanitarian law. This is based on the argument that these systems, with the utilization of artificial intelligence will be able to assess situations at a moments notice where time is of the essence, and a flawed human mind may take too long. These systems are important to take into consideration and assess the viability of utilizing them in the future. With advanced systems such as these, questioning the ethics of giving a machine the right to choose who lives and who does not is a question that has to inevitably be answered. All concerns regarding LAWS must be taken into consideration and assessed by everyone to make sure there is agreement on whether these pieces of technology should be allowed in the battlefield, or should be banned outright.