Autonomy in weapons systems and its meaningful human control: a differentiated and prudential approach

On the basis of a brief overview of ethical and legal reasons advanced in debates on autonomous weapons systems, it is argued that a genuinely meaningful human control (MHC) over weapons systems should invariably preserve a fail-safe role for human operators, human accountability for war crimes, and the kind of moral agency to exert in targeting and engagement decisions. Moreover, it is argued that one can meet these core requirements by adopting a suitably differentiated approach, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach to MHC. Finally, a differentiated and prudential approach to MHC is sketched out. It is differentiated, insofar as human control is modulated taking into account what mission a given weapons system must carry out, where it is deployed and how it performs its tasks; it is prudential, insofar as stricter forms of human control are applied by default, unless otherwise agreed on by the international community of states.