Paper short abstract:

The paper is engaging with concepts and embodiments of drone swarms as a specific form of autonomous weapon systems. Based on the analysis of two military research and development projects, questions about a swarm agency or distributed agency in human-swarm assemblages will be addressed.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is engaging with concepts and embodiments of drone swarms as a specific form of autonomous weapon systems. Current military discourse in the US and many other nations assigns robotic swarms a significant role in future warfare - especially in potential conflicts with adversaries who are equipped with modern information and communication technology and are therefore to be considered equal opponents. Based on complexity theory concepts of collective intelligence, emergence and adaptivity, robotic swarms are seen as the key to superiority on the "battlespaces" of the future. On the other hand, swarms also pose a problem in that they have their own agency, which defies claims to controllability and predictability and therefore implies a lack of responsibility and trust. In addition, the political demand for a meaningful human control of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) as well as fundamental military Command and Control (C2) concepts pose specific challenges for the design of human-swarm interactions and human-swarm teaming.

Against the background of these discourses and imaginations, I would like to present two military research and development projects that (among other things) deal with robotic swarms and analyze their implications for swarm agency or distributed agency in human-swarm assemblages: Firstly, the DARPA project Offensive Swarm Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) and secondly, a relevant part of the European major armament project Future Combat Air System (FCAS).