This book is amongst the first academic treatments of the§emerging debate on autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons are capable, once§programmed, of searching for and engaging a target without direct intervention§by a human operator. Critics of these weapons claim that 'taking the human§out-of-the-loop' represents a further step towards the de-humanisation of§warfare, while advocates of this type of technology contend that the power of§machine autonomy can potentially be harnessed in order to prevent war crimes.§This book provides a thorough and critical assessment of these two positions.§Written by a political philosopher at the forefront of the autonomous weapons§debate, the book clearly assesses the ethical and legal ramifications of§autonomous weapons, and presents a novel ethical argument against fully§autonomous weapons.§§