Military Ethics Education For Technology-Immersed Battlefields

Military ethics education is an important aspect of military training. As military personnel may face difficult ethical dilemmas, the competence to handle them correctly is crucial. Currently, there is a desired transition within the Dutch military from a rule-based ethics education (functional) to a more virtue-based approach (aspirational), placing greater emphasis on character building rather than rules and order. At the same time, ethics and ethics education are influenced by changing contexts, such as contemporary technological developments in warfare. However, currently it remains unclear what the effectiveness of ethics education is and to what extent it integrates both these developments. This empirical study investigated the individual experiences of the participants of a specific ethics course, the Trainer Course in Military Ethics (TCME), as a contribution to a larger study on the effectiveness of ethics education in the Dutch military.