The Ethical Use of Outer Space - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 116

speed and long range … as well as seeing how well it manoeuvres and how precisely
it could strike a target' (Miles 2012 ). The Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) - the US military's advanced technology and innovation arm - is
also developing a Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) as part of the advanced
Conventional Prompt Global Strike weapons programme (Space.com 2012 ), and
the USAF is testing another DARPA hypersonic aircraft - the Waverider, or X-51A -
although tests so far have not been very successful (Slosson 2012 ).
More recently, satellites are being used to enable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAVs, or drones) fl own by the United States in places such as Afghanistan and
Pakistan, to be remotely piloted from thousands of miles away in control centres in
the United States. The majority of drones are used for surveillance, but some are
armed with missiles targeted and fi red from the United States. The growing use of
this form of remote warfare has caused an international outcry (Medea and
Ehrenreich 2012 ). Pilots operate drones and fi re their missiles from thousands of
miles away at no risk to themselves, and there is concern that this leads more readily
to decisions to deploy them to remove 'ringleaders' in the short-term rather than
develop long-term diplomatic processes aimed at identifying the root causes of the
confl ict. In addition, the 'PlayStation mentality' of some pilots used to playing real-
istic video games may lower the threshold for the use of lethal force as seeing tar-
gets on a video screen is quite different from seeing them in the fl esh.
Drones are being deployed by an increasing number of countries and there is a
growing interest in the development of autonomous military robotic systems such as
Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs, systems that will not need a human
'in the loop' to make decisions in combat situations). There are serious ethical ques-
tions arising over whether armed robots should be able to make life or death deci-
sions. The International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and the
Campaign to Stop Killer Robots believe this would be:
inherently wrong, morally and ethically. Fully autonomous weapons are likely to run afoul
of international humanitarian law, and there are serious technical, proliferation, societal,
and other concerns that make a preemptive ban necessary.

This issue is also now being addressed by the UN Convention on Conventional
Weapons whose purpose is to ban or restrict the use of weapons considered to cause
unnecessary or unjustifi able suffering to combatants or to affect civilians
indiscriminately.

3.4 Dual-Use Space Systems

International agreements ensure that all states have the right to develop space tech-
nologies but also attempt to ensure that outer space remains free for all to use and
does not become a battleground. There are problems with identifying the purpose
behind many of the satellites launched as many of their capabilities can be useful for
civil or military purposes. For example, the military can and do purchase images