Articles & Multimedia
Showing 81-99 of 99 Publications
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Release the drones
This week, the Obama administration announced a new policy loosening export restrictions for military and commercial drones. This policy shift represents a responsible first s...
By Kelley Sayler, Paul Scharre & Van Jackson
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Ash Carter: Invest in the 3rd Offset Strategy
Ashton Carter, the newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of Defense, will need to articulate his vision of how he intends to lead the Pentagon over the next two years. He would do ...
By Paul Scharre, Shawn Brimley & Jerry Hendrix
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Between a Roomba and a Terminator: What is Autonomy?
Department of Defense leaders have stated that robotics and autonomous systems will be a key part of a new “offset strategy” to sustain American military d...
By Paul Scharre
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What to Look For in the DoD Budget
Next week, the Department of Defense (DoD) will release its annual budget, which is where wonky strategy-speak gets translated into real hard dollars. Even though DoD just com...
By Paul Scharre
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Commentary: Swarming the Battlefield
The US Department of Defense has launched a long-range research and development planning effort, and DoD leaders have stated that robotics and autonomous systems will be a cri...
By Paul Scharre
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Paul Scharre and Michael Horowitz on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems
hen the robots start thinking for themselves in the movies or on TV, it’s never a good sign for the humans. Whether the setting is Earth or Caprica, letting robots think and g...
By Michael Horowitz & Paul Scharre
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America's Secret Weapon for Battlefield Dominance: Build the Swarm
The U.S. military is at a crisis point. We are staring down the barrel of a future where U.S. military technological superiority may no longer be a given wherethe military str...
By Paul Scharre
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To Save Money, Go Unmanned
U.S. Defense Department leaders have called for a renewed effort to sustain America’s military technological dominance, but to do so they will have to fight an uphill battle a...
By Daniel Burg & Paul Scharre
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The Coming Swarm: Robotics on the Battlefield
The unfolding robotics revolution is transforming a range of industries, from manufacturing to transportation, warehouse management, household appliances, toys, elder care and...
By Paul Scharre
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To Save the Navy’s Next-Gen Drone, Kill It First
The Defense Department was set to release this summer the final request for proposal for the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike, or UCLASS, aircraft, b...
By Paul Scharre & Shawn Brimley
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Do Drones Have A Future?
Thirteen years ago today the Predator drone saw its first armed reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan. Since then, the U.S. military drone fleet has grown by leaps and bounds....
By Paul Scharre
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Is the U.S. Air Force Set for a "Crash Landing"?
In its recently-released thirty-year strategy document, the Air Force lays out a clear vision for its future. Unlike many government strategy documents, America’s Air Force: A...
By Paul Scharre
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To Defeat ISIL, Empower Sunni Iraqis and Syrians
Thirteen years after 9/11, Islamic militants have seized a state-sized territory in the heart of the Middle East, and the United States is struggling to determine how to respo...
By Paul Scharre
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Left Behind: Why It's Time to Draft Robots for CASEVAC
With thousands of air and ground robots in the field, you could be forgiven for thinking that the U.S. military has embraced unmanned systems. The truth is that they are used ...
By Paul Scharre
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The U.S. Needs More Drones
Al-Qaeda is morphing and metastasizing, spreading like a cancer in an arc of jihadism from the deserts of Northern Mali through Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq...
By Paul Scharre
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How to Lose the Robotics Revolution
The U.S. military is at the leading edge of the robotics revolution, with some of the most advanced systems on the globe like the autonomous X-47B carrier-based aircraft. But ...
By Paul Scharre
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Autonomy, “Killer Robots,” and Human Control in the Use of Force – Part II
In a recent post , I covered how autonomy is currently used in weapons and what is different about potential future autonomous weapons that would select and engage targets on ...
By Paul Scharre
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Autonomy, “Killer Robots,” and Human Control in the Use of Force – Part I
In May of this year, the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons(CCW) held the first multilateral discussions on autonomous weapons or, as activists like to ...
By Paul Scharre
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Reflections on the Chatham House Autonomy Conference
Chatham House recently held a conference on autonomous military technologies, the focus of which was really the current debate regarding autonomous weapon systems. Kudos to Ch...
By Paul Scharre