David Omand, the former head of the UK spy agency GCHQ, has changed his stance on autonomous weapons, now arguing that artificial intelligence can enable drones to operate within a moral framework that complies with international humanitarian law. Speaking to the Guardian ahead of his appearance at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Omand said he was convinced by the accelerating pace of modern warfare and advances in generative AI, which he believes can create ethically sound decision-making systems for unmanned vehicles.
From sceptic to advocate
More than a decade ago, Omand chaired a University of Birmingham commission that expressed doubts about autonomous weapons' ability to distinguish between civilians and combatants. However, he now contends that AI can weigh factors such as target legitimacy, civilian casualties, and identification accuracy—essentially encoding existing military ethics into machine-readable rules. "My call is to really get some work done on this, so that we're not left in a situation where there isn't a moral component built into future AI-powered weapon systems," he said.
Human oversight in the loop
Omand envisions a shift from humans being "in the loop"—intimately involved in each targeting decision—to being "on the loop," where humans supervise AI systems but do not authorise every action. This is necessary, he argued, because warfare is becoming too fast for human reaction times. "It's a physical and operational inevitability. The term 'on the loop' means you still have human supervision and it's humans setting the parameters of a mission," Omand explained. He added that moral frameworks must be adjustable per mission, with variables like expected civilian presence assigned importance levels by the human operator.
The UK's armed forces minister, Al Carns, has also suggested that machines might make their own targeting decisions in certain circumstances, stating, "You must have the ability to take the human out of the loop when required." Meanwhile, the US is investing heavily in autonomous systems, with a $54 billion allocation in its 2027 budget for "drone dominance" and other autonomous capabilities. However, former CIA director David Petraeus has noted that the US lacks a formal military doctrine for autonomous formations.
Criticism and concerns
Chris Cole, director of Drone Wars UK, dismissed Omand's position as "as nonsensical as it is dangerous," arguing that AI cannot make genuine judgments, only process data. "AI is simply not capable of making a judgment. It merely processes data, completely lacking the ability, for example, to distinguish civilians from combatants or to judge whether loss of life is proportionate to military advantage," Cole said.
Omand, now a visiting professor at King's College London, maintains that a properly programmed system could be ethically superior to humans under high-pressure conditions. "It could actually work, whereas relying on humans in a very fast-moving seconds matter for warfare is probably going to lead to far worse results in terms of collateral damage," he said. He proposes an "adaptive moral control layer" where humans set parameters before a mission, formalising moral authority. The debate over AI in warfare continues to intensify as technology advances and nations race to integrate autonomous systems into their militaries.
