Raw LLM Responses

This debate reminds me of the millennium old debate about the amount of autonomy to be granted to front-line units in contrast to strong top-down central control. Both have had their successes. It is the trade off between tactical efficiency and the potential for strategic blunders (as shown in the movie Crimson Tide). For humans, the key was always training and -- possibly more importantly -- indoctrination. To properly place AWS, one needs to understand the success and failure of functionally autonomous units on a "standard" battlefield. As an aside, I find the concept of the "rules of/for war" to be ludicrous and logically incoherent. War is the breakdown of rules, and there is plenty of evidence to show that any such rules are quickly and routinely abandoned in war (endless examples in WW1,WW2, Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, Russians in Ukraine, Hamas). It is only victory that allows the victors to take the moral high ground (e.g., the starvation blockage of WW1 Germany, bomber Harris, the destruction of the Ruhr dams, fire bombings of entire cities packed with civilians). Remember: A POW is a person who expended a lot of effort trying to kill you -- likely killing a number of your friends in the process. The people who violate those rules are rarely punished -- even if on the side of the vanquished (practically never if on the side of the victors) -- just watch what happens at the end of the Ukraine/Russian war. In a crunch, I cannot imagine any nation sticking to rules governing the use of LAWS, and LAWS do not have that last moral safeguard (see Vasili Arkhipov).