I found a presentation by Mr. John S. Canning, Chief Engineer of G80 Division Naval Surface Warfare Centre, titled “A Concept of Operations for Armed Autonomous Systems”. Armin Krishnan commented on some of the John Canning’s thoughts during his interview with Institute of Religion and Peace (access Krishnan interview post).

In the presentation he goes through:

• Legal review of weapons
• Rules of Engagement
• Discriminate use of force
• Issues of target discrimination
• A proposed concept of operations for autonomous use of weapons
• Valid targets from a legal standpoint
• Target subset for autonomous systems
• Legal precedence

He concludes his presentation with the following conclusion:

“Let the machines target machines –not people”

Access the presentation slides: canning.pdf