Lethal Autonomy: The Future of Warfare Whether We Like It or Not

A broad and thorough coverage of the future of warfare across all military domains—including space and cyberspace—that presents a clear, compelling, and well supported description of how lethal autonomous platforms will transform warfare.

The proliferation of the use of drones in the Russia-Ukraine conflict provides some indication of how warfare is changing, but Lethal Autonomy: The Future of Warfare goes much further, presenting compelling descriptions of how artificial intelligence and autonomous weaponry are going to transform conventional warfare, rendering current militaries almost entirely obsolete.

Beginning with a description of the attributes that have characterized advances in military technology and impacted operational concepts and organizations, Frank Kendall discusses the features that matter in warfare and the analytical basis for assessing new concepts. For each traditional military domain ground, sea surface, sea subsurface, and air as well as for space, cyberspace and multi-domain operations, he provides a detailed description of the concepts, building blocks, and complexities that have to be considered in designing forces incorporating lethal autonomy.