{"id":16395,"date":"2021-04-29T11:53:59","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T11:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/04\/29\/army-commanders-must-navigate-changing-rules-of-war-on-future-complex-battlefields\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:54:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:54:38","slug":"army-commanders-must-navigate-changing-rules-of-war-on-future-complex-battlefields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/your-army\/2021\/04\/29\/army-commanders-must-navigate-changing-rules-of-war-on-future-complex-battlefields\/","title":{"rendered":"Army commanders must navigate changing rules of war on future, complex battlefields"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Army leaders are taking a hard look at how its new way of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/your-military\/2021\/04\/16\/biden-wants-congress-not-courts-to-decide-on-adding-women-to-military-draft\/\" target=_blank>warfare<\/a>, a fast-paced, multi-domain, wide-ranging style of combat, will bring a host of challenges to the laws of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In an event titled, \u201cThe Future Character of War and the Law of Armed Conflict\u201d hosted by the Army Futures Command and the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare at West Point April 22, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2021\/04\/05\/all-volunteer-force-cant-meet-pentagons-future-needs-advocates-warn\/\" target=_blank>military planners<\/a>, professors, lawyers and the four-star tasked with charting the Army\u2019s future shared what they think commanders in 2035 will face. They key takeaways: Everything will be much faster;l information overload is likely; and deciphering good data from bad will matter more than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/your-army\/2020\/01\/23\/the-law-of-land-warfare-handbook-is-now-available-as-a-pocket-guide\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-1073946762.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">The law of land warfare handbook is now available as a \u2018pocket guide\u2019<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">The Army has issued a new 200-page handbook for general officers and judge advocates in the service as it looks to update a more than 60-year-old guide for ground-pounders wading through legalese.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Army is planning for a sensor-saturated environment where the ability for units to hide will be \u201calmost impossible,\u201d fighting in dense urban areas is highly likely, and nation-state-level technology will move rapidly into the hands of nonstate actors, said Gen. Mike Murray, the head of AFC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Future Army commanders will have to lean on technology such as artificial intelligence and autonomous and semi-autonomous systems just to do their jobs, Murray said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He painted a scenario in which a swarm of 100 drones is headed toward an Army formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIs it within a human\u2019s ability to pick out which ones have to be engaged first? Is it even necessary to have a human in the loop when you\u2019re talking about effects against an unmanned system?\u201d Murray said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s where tech and operations merge in perhaps a clear way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But what about mimicry? What are the ethical or legal boundaries for masking your formation to look like a civilian object? That Stryker emitting the kind of signature similar to a city bus, for instance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was a scenario West Point Professor Rob Lawless presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s where things get murky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere really won\u2019t be anywhere to hide on that future battlefield,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to overstate this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As cyber and electronic warfare tools progress, thinkers have to acknowledge the tough questions military leaders face in how they can use their own tools in a legal and ethical way, and how their adversaries might use such tools against them without the same constraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And those tools, such as autonomous platforms and artificial intelligence, are not simply add-ons to existing weapons. They are the entry fee for future war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s how entrenched AI and autonomy are in 2035,\u201d said Dr. Sasha Radin, Lieber Institute professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The battalion or brigade commander of the near future, a West Point cadet today, will have more pressure on them to understand what their autonomous systems can and can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They will also need to know how much they can trust all of the data that\u2019s being delivered to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIs this data accurate, biased, corrupted, hacked?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Core principles of lawful warfare, such as judging the foreseeability of certain actions by commanders in combat will remain but will also be altered by these more complex, fast-paced scenarios, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Military commanders, like civilians facing criminal accountability, are now judged on standards of \u201creasonableness,\u201d that is, what would a reasonable person do in that same situation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That standard, like the battlespace, may change over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat does reasonable mean in 2035 with all of this reliance on data in decision making?\u201d Radin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some of this is being tested, at least the technology and decision-making part. The Army conducted its first major iteration of \u201cProject Convergence\u201d in fall 2020 with a scaled up version scheduled this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The project blends AI, robotics and autonomy across multiple systems. Murray said that at last year\u2019s event in Yuma, Arizona, they were able to take processes that now take 10 minutes or more and reduce them to 10 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat\u2019s going to happen across the battlefield,\u201d Murray said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to learn to trust AI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Murray reflected on his own experience in Afghanistan, where he would be surrounded by an operations officer, intelligence officer, fires officer and a staff judge advocate to weigh in on the legal parameters and ramifications of certain life or death decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lt. Col. Keith Donnell, chief of the Army Future Studies and Integration Branch, noted that while the Army is on the edge of \u201cunpacking capabilities for the force\u201d it will take a significant amount of work to merge that tech with the human decision maker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe same thing will apply to how we examine it through a legal eye,\u201d Donnell said. \u201cWe have to understand the operational risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Future commanders involved in such situations will need legal experts alongside them who are able to identify and dissect these risks and provide options, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fast-paced, data-drenched operations will present legal and ethical challenges for commanders as they make decisions on the battlefield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":36789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":70,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","news","left-column","home"],"primary_category":"your-military"}}},"categories":[100,23,92,12,25,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3366],"class_list":["post-16395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-left-column","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"6HZZD7V6YRBEHLCQW573YECLZU","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-army\/2021\/04\/29\/army-commanders-must-navigate-changing-rules-of-war-on-future-complex-battlefields\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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