“Killer robot”… How did Turkey underestimate the lives of Libyans?
A UN report on Turkey’s use of autonomous weapons in Libya last year has come as a resounding surprise.
“But it has not gone unnoticed, sparking heated debate about the impact of such weapons on civilians and exacerbating indiscriminate killing”.
The UN Committee of Experts said in a report released yesterday that Turkey used autonomous weapons systems against human targets, for the first time, in Libya last year.
The report described these autonomous weapons as “killer robots,” adding that these weapons “targeted Libyan army forces that were besieging the capital Tripoli in spring 2020.”
The report identified UCAVs and CARGU-2 as among the autonomous weapons Turkey used in Libya.
“Lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) are programmed to attack their targets without the need to communicate with a human operator and independently identify their targets,” UN experts wrote in the same report.
Germany’s Bild newspaper commented that “what this means is that autonomous weapons systems independently seek out targets,” explaining that “lethal autonomous weapons systems can attack targets without prior human confirmation from the operator.”
“The use of such aircraft increases the likelihood of indiscriminate targeting of civilian targets,” she said.
Neither the Libyan authorities nor the UN have yet opened an investigation into the civilian victims of such weapons in Libya.
Autonomous drones are relatively small flying objects (the wing is 0.6 meters long) and carry missiles. “These aircraft destroy themselves in the attack, that is, they can be considered booby-trapped aircraft.”
The use of such “light munitions” – small aircraft that circle above their area of operations before attacking a target – is not new, Bild said, because they open the door to indiscriminate killing without human control.
Turkey entered the conflict in Libya by supporting the so-called “Government of Reconciliation” of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj with foreign mercenaries and arms smuggling in flagrant violation of the UN arms embargo on the country.
