SOCIOLOGY IN SWITZERLAND World Society and International Relations Modest Prospectives for Military Robots in Today’s Asymmetric Wars

„They don’t forget their orders.“ (P. W. Singer 2009) Abstract Some recent developments in (semi-)automatic weaponry (like the “irobot 510 Packbot” or MQ-9 Reaper drones) have revived the interest in“unmanned warfare” and “robot soldiers”. A closer look reveals that such devices are apt to accomplish many specialize tasks shunned (or impossible to carry out) by human fighters, that they increase offensive and defensive action capacities of armed forces and that they may lower the threshold for applying violence and entering wars. On the other hand, their dependence on highly structured, simplified environments makes them of little use under conditions of modern infantry fighting, in asymmetric warfare characterized by a blurring between military and civilian individuals and targets, and especially in peace enforcing and nation rebuilding missions where even the much higher polyvalence and versalility of human soldiers is challenged to the extreme. Within military organizations, robots facilitate the centralization and strict implementation of normative rules, and on a strategic level, they may indirectly fuel worldwide terrorism because attackers are motivated to divert violence form battlefields to softer (human) targets. ___________________________________