71 3 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK In the next section we apply the Comprehensive Human Oversight Framework to the case of Autonomous Weapon Systems. We describe the implications for the applicability of military control instruments for Autonomous Weapon Systems with different levels of autonomy. We compare the Comprehensive Human Oversight Framework presented in section 3.1, which is based on the literature review, to the application of the Framework to Autonomous Weapon Systems (section 3.3). This reveals two gaps in the control mechanisms that arise when the concept of autonomy is introduced in weapon systems which can be linked to the accountability gaps in section 2.9. 3.3 APPLICATION COMPREHENSIVE HUMAN OVERSIGHT FRAMEWORK TO AUTONOMOUS WEAPON SYSTEMS The difference between a conventional weapon system and an Autonomous Weapon System is the notion of autonomy (see section 2.3). Weapon systems may comprise of different levels of autonomy. But even in the case of a “fully Autonomous Weapon System”, ‘[…] that, without human intervention, selects and engages targets matching certain predefined criteria, following a human decision to deploy the weapon on the understanding that an attack, once launched, cannot be stopped by human intervention.’ (AIV & CAVV, 2015; Broeks et al., 2021) the type of autonomy can at most be executive autonomy (see section 2.3 for description of executive autonomy), because a human will set its goals and the weapon will not decide on its goals or deployment itself. Also, the context will constrain the autonomy of a “fully Autonomous Weapon System” as autonomous systems are created with task goals and boundary conditions (Bradshaw, Hoffman, Woods, & Johnson, 2013). In case of Autonomous Weapon Systems, the context will include physical limitations to the area of operations, for example the presence, or lack of, civilians in the land, sea, cyber, air or space domain.
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