The long-standing fact that countries can openly send weapons to combatants in a war without that, by itself, counting as them joining the war under international law makes me think of another implication of highly autonomous weapon systems.
Up until now, if you give someone weapons, their own soldiers still have to carry them, their own pilots still have to fly them, and so on. But the more autonomous the weapon system is, the more it simply becomes a combatant itself. Guided missiles are already kind of an example, but you can’t hold territory with missiles alone. But what if the US could just gift Ukraine a few divisions[1] of these?
It’s still only a “weapons” transfer, but now it looks more like you’re just sending one of your own divisions, even if they are just weapons, and are operating under both the flag and the actual command of the Ukraine army.
Realistically, this is the sort of cheeky legal hack that either gets ignored or immediately patched because, like, come on dude. But someone might try it at least once.
[1] A division is about 10k-15k soldiers, for modern mechanized infantry.
