What is the Pentagon’s New Defense Doctrine?
The Pentagon's newest defense doctrine can better be described as a multi-pronged defense strategy with three main pillars: Directive 3000.09, Project Replicator, and the JADC2.
In January 2023, the Department of Defense (DoD) updated its catalog with Directive 3000.09, highlighting the deployment of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons. Rather than fully banning autonomous weapons, it mandates that the weapons must undergo rigorous testing and earn senior-level approvals from the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. However, this oversight process is not open to the public, which raises ethical concerns about whether these weapons are really being looked into.
Figure 1: Flow Chart to determine if Senior Level of Approval is Necessary
7 months later, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks launched Project Replicator with a simple idea—counter China’s mass with our own mass but in a smarter, cheaper, and expendable way. Project Replicator aimed to deliver all-domain attritable autonomous systems (ADA2) by the thousands. This would put cheaper uncrewed systems on the frontlines and decrease the number of people in the line of fire. In September 2024, the DoD approved Replicator 2—the second iteration of Project Replicator. This initiative aimed to specifically counter drone technology with minimal collateral damage.
The DoD also created the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). This system connects all sensors, shooters, and communication devices across all military branches into a single network. By unifying all automated weapons, the DoD hopes to speed up decision-making and reach faster response times while also improving control over the weapons.
The key point of this doctrine is that there is minimal human intervention. It implies that the DoD believes that machines need to be making lethal decisions fast and deter China from this arms race.
How are these systems being created and deployed?
We don’t know.
Names, models, manufacturers, criteria, data. Most, if not all, information is being left in the dark. This lack of transparency has led to confusion even amongst NATO members. According to NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, there is still no unified policy or shared doctrine to govern these lethal autonomous weapons. While the UK and France have embraced AI warfare, countries such as Germany and Norway have strong reservations about the minimal human oversight.
What we do know is that autonomous weapons have been implemented in order to conduct reconnaissance. The Bullfrog turret, for example, is an automated weapon that shoots any enemy drones on sight without any human intervention. However, the development of automated weapon systems is a “black box” to the public—we know the inputs and outputs, but nothing else about internal decisions. Without knowledge of how these weapons are being created, there is no way to ensure accountability and verify compliance.
What should we be worried about?
What is even more concerning is the lack of public debate about these AI-powered weapons despite their potentially devastating impact. Even if automation is behind closed doors, we should still attempt to kick it down.
Organizations, such as Stop Killer Robots, are trying to ban the future development of these weapons. They argue that these killer robots’ decisions are often inscrutable even to the engineers who built them. The Red Cross and Human Rights Watch go even further, saying that delegating life-or-death decisions to these machines violates many international humanitarian law principles. Even more so, entrusting these machines with the decision of killing someone undermines the moral responsibility that we bear for the bloodshed and violence of war. Trying to put a machine in between us and the horrors it inflicts our dignity.
The deployment of these automated weapons also introduces another layer of global security instability, particularly the impact that it will have on nuclear and biological deterrence. With the increased risk of miscalculation and false attribution due to the limited human oversight, the impact of failure can be catastrophic. Even worse, the unpredictability of these weapons due to a lack of information about them can lead to subpar response times and threat assessments. Moreover, with the normalization of autonomous and unaccountable warfare, rival states may pursue responses like bioweapons development to keep up. As we enter this new world of AI-driven military strategy, the integration of these autonomous weapons within national defense doctrines threatens the ethical safeguards that have protected us so far.