"You\´ve just been disarmed. Have a nice day!"

On September 23,2003, the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) hosted a meeting in Dahlgren, VA, to explore the arming of unmanned systems. We were interested in what it was going to take to produce armed, fully-autonomous, unmanned systems that could decide for themselves when to pull the trigger. We invited personnel from the Navy´s Office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG), International Law Division, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense´s (OSD) Office of General Counsel to attend because we had concluded that the legal issues involved would likely be a major problem area. This was an historic meeting between lawyers and engineers!