Implications of the Unmanned and Autonomous Weapons’ Development for NATO Functioning – Delineating the Research Area

The article deals with the impact of the development of unmanned and autonomous weapons on NATO’s functioning as a political-military alliance. Its central goal is to establish the scope and intensity of possible consequences of the development of unmanned and autonomous military technologies for NATO, identifying simultaneously key implications of that technological change for the Alliance functioning in four dimensions: political-strategic, legal, economic, and operational. That will help define and map the research field in the context of the nexus of the technology and coalition’s functioning. The article is based on the assumption that changes in the nature and forms of cooperation between NATO allies triggered by the advances in unmanned and autonomous weapons and other military systems would potentially be much more profound than in the case of the majority of similar technological breakthroughs in the past, leading to the emergence of serious challenges for allies in all four dimensions recognized in the study. The article offers arguments to support that thesis and identifies the main actual and potential implications of the development of unmanned and autonomous military technologies for NATO, stressing also the need of increasing the awareness of the problem among both security policies’ researchers as well as their practitioners (politicians, military, NATO personnel).