Presented by:

Dr. Malcolm G. Tutty, Research Fellow, RAAF Air and Space Power Centre, Senior Lecturer UNSW and ITEA BoD

Over the last few decades, defence communication and information systems have been increasing the complexity and interconnectedness of systems that has pervaded society more broadly throughout the Information Age.  Even more than society in the broad, Western Departments of Defence (DoDs) have sought to attain information dominance at the same time as it struggles with lethal autonomy. The result has been a large number of complex systems, system-of-systems and families-of-system-of-systems in both the physical, human and information domains.  How should we address fully Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) as Network-Enabled Weapons (NEW), directed energy and cyber warfare become more attractive and where does human command and control of Lethal AWS sit with responsible use of artificial intelligence and ensuring information assurance?

This presentation examines the UN and Australian perspective and the System of Controls and Advanced Control Directives being proposed to address the implications of Lethal AWS and NEWs for human decision making in their employment. Given the complex systems and key assurance initiatives being pursued systematically by the US, UK and Australian DoD initiatives to effect these more integrated, interoperable and information-assured (I3A) capabilities, while also ensuring these capabilities remain resilient to the new cyber threats using ethically-aligned approaches to experimentation, test & evaluation and employment.