In March 2021, the University of South Demmar and the UK Campaign Campaign to Stop Killer Robots’ member, Drone Wars, launched the report “Meaning-less human control: Lessons from air defence systems for Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems“. The report draws on a new data catalogue constructed by the report’s authors, Ingvild Bode and Tom Watts, to examine automation and autonomy in 28 air defence systems used across the world, and analyses high-profile failures of such systems including the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 (1988), Malaysian Airlines MH 17 (2014), Ukrainian Airlines PS752 (2020), and two instances of fratricide involving the Patriot Air Defense System in the Second Gulf War (2003). Its central argument is that the integration of autonomy and automation into the critical functions of air defense systems has, under some conditions, made human control over specific use of force decisions increasingly meaningless.
