Autonomous Systems and the Speed of Battle: Legal Risks and Strategic Adaptation in AI-Enabled Warfare

This article investigates the strategic implications of deploying autonomous unmanned systems (AI-UxS) powered by artificial intelligence in contemporary military operations. It focuses on the legal and operational challenges arising from delegating critical functions to algorithms capable of independently identifying, tracking, and engaging targets without direct human oversight. The analysis highlights concerns about disrupted accountability chains, vulnerabilities to cyber interference, and the risk of escalatory dynamics arising from interactions among multiple autonomous platforms. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of decision-time compression, in which AI-driven systems operate on timescales that outpace human decision-making. The study examines the operational impact of uncrewed water systems (UWS) on naval warfare, emphasizing how these technologies reshape traditional concepts of maritime engagement. Rather than proposing entirely new treaties, the article argues for a strengthened interpretation of existing international humanitarian law (IHL) focused on the challenge of decision-time compression. It explicitly uses the case of uncrewed water systems (UWS) to demonstrate that naval autonomy necessitates new standards for meaningful human control. In support of this, the paper outlines policy recommendations to incentivize technological innovation, establish national oversight mechanisms, and promote interagency coordination. It also stresses the importance of aligning international regulatory efforts through existing platforms, including the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE-LAWS), NATO, the European Commission, and the international security partnership AUKUS. Ultimately, the article emphasizes the importance of ensuring that the development and deployment of AI-enabled military systems align with humanitarian law in future armed conflicts.