Autonomous Military Robots (LAR) as Weapons Thesis Statement: There are various social and political implications surrounding the use of lethally autonomous robots (LAR) as military weapons. The military use of Lethally Autonomous Robots (LAR) is not science fiction – it's happening right now. A robot is a mechanism driven by automatic controls. Autonomous robots are capable of autonomously maintaining stability and planning action. The first generation of military robots operated under direct human control. The best-known military robots are "drones" or unmanned aerial vehicles. The drone system currently in use are the IAI Pioneer and RQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicles which can be armed with air-to-ground missiles and operated remotely from a command center. Drones have already been used by the US military for unmanned air strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other war zones. (Merchant, 276). Several military robotic automation systems already operate at the level where the human is still in command and responsible for the deployment of lethal force, but not in a directly supervised manner. The Phalanx system for the Navy's Aegis-class cruisers is designed to be the last line of defense against anti-ship missiles. The gun mount moves with rapid precision. The system receives a low amount of input from the ship, making it able to function despite potential damage to the ship. There are several settings for the Phalanx system, with the final security setting of "victim" which will defend the ship from air attacks without human selection of targets. The MK 69 Encapsulated Torpedo Sea Mine System (CAPTOR) was the US Navy's standard anti-submarine mine during the Cold War, having enough computing power for... half the paper... already in place. It is too late to stop their development, we can only try to use them responsibly and ethically. Works Cited Harris, Tom. "How robots work." HowStuffWorks.com. Np, 16 April 2002. Web. 26 February 2014. .Kirkpatrick, Keith. “Legal Issues with Robots.” Communications of the ACM. November 2013: 5-7pm. Print.Noorman, Merel, and Deborah G. Johnson. “Negotiating autonomy and responsibility in military robots.” Ethics and information technology. (February): 2014. Print.Sandler, Ronald L. Ethics and Emerging Technologies. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2013. Print. Singer, P. W. “Military Robots and the Laws of War.” 2009: 31. Print."International governance of autonomous military robots." Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. .