Digitisation and robotisation: the challenges of a revolution in the art of warfare

Abstract

The article presents the main technological changes that will revolutionise the art of warfare on the battlefield: the digitisation of military equipment, which is already underway, followed by the emergence of robotic platforms, whose widespread use in current conflicts represents the first phase, and then the introduction of artificial intelligence into the decision-making processes delegated to weapon systems. These changes will lead to profound upheavals: ubiquitous occupation of spaces, future warfare between robots requiring autonomy in the execution of delegated tasks, excessive centralisation of data, and more. These upheavals raise questions about the trustworthiness of these systems, as well as the need to preserve the role of the military commander as the decision-maker, the sole moral guarantor and the sole person responsible for the decisions to be made. The ethical issues are significant, with the temptation to radically change military ethics, which risks shifting from human-based ethics to systems-based ethics, which will have to be certified as compliant with the battlefield modelling, deemed perfect but which will remain a perfect utopia given its complexity.