Targeting
I Spy: Espionage, Perfidy, and Fighting in the Shadows
In a 2024 Articles of War post, I identified that intelligence gathering, including espionage, is authorized by both treaty and customary international law during armed conflict. For international armed conflicts, the treaty basis is found in Article 24 of the 1907...
The Status of the U.S. Coast Guard’s People, Bases and Equipment, and Vessels Under LOAC
The U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) recently published an article highlighting the integral role the U.S. Coast Guard might play in a future high-intensity conflict. Set in the context of the American Sea Power Project’s fictional War of 2026 scenario, wherein the United...
Indo-Pacific Legal Topics for Operational Lawyers
The year 2024 was a time of increasing instability for global security. The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has resurrected the specter of a world war, in which North Korea is also involved. Perhaps related to that war, November of last year saw an incident in...
The Drone Threat, the Laser Response, and the Law – Part I
In conflicts during the last few years, unmanned air weapons, commonly referred to as drones, have increasingly been used to undertake attacks of ground targets. These attacks have recently involved large numbers of these drones, often directed at multiple targets....
Year in Review – 2024
2024 was defined by a landscape of intensifying conflicts, continuous technological advancements (see here and here), and evolving debates over the application of the law of armed conflict (LOAC). The persistent war in Ukraine, the volatile Israel-Hezbollah and...
Killing General Kirillov: Questions and Answers
On December 17, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces, and his assistant were killed in a bomb explosion outside his Moscow apartment building. The bomb was concealed in an electric scooter and...
Rules of Engagement in Large-Scale Combat Operations: Force Enabler or Much Ado About Nothing?
Rules of Engagement (ROE) have traditionally played a major role in the execution of military operations, particularly when a given situation has not reached the threshold of armed conflict. In more recent years, however, some military operations have used ROE to...
NATO Interoperability When Targeting Indispensable Objects
A recent Lieber Paper strikes an optimistic note concerning legal interoperability, arguing that the dissimilarities stemming from uneven treaty membership between NATO allies are less significant than they may seem. However, one contentious subject has the potential...
Understanding the Distinction Between Property Destruction Governed by Hague Article 23(g) and the Rules Governing Attacks
This analysis follows my prior post explaining the obligations imposed by Article 23(g) of the Hague Regulations of 1907, annexed to Hague Convention IV. For the reasons stated below, the attack rules contained in Additional Protocol I (AP I) control destruction of...
Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – Why Yahya Sinwar Was Not Hors de Combat
On or about October 17, 2024, members of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) killed Yahya Sinwar, the political leader of Hamas and a suspected mastermind behind the October 7, 2023 attack that viciously murdered 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children. Among those...
Hybrid Threats and Grey Zone Conflict Symposium – Challenges in the Twilight of International Law
Editors note: The following post highlights a chapter that appears in Mitt Regan and Aurel Sari’s recently published book Hybrid Threats and Grey Zone Conflict: The Challenge to Liberal Democracies. For a general introduction to the series, see Prof Mitt Regan and...
Electronic Warfare and the Law of Armed Conflict
Earlier this year, we had the pleasure of participating in the “Future of Warfare and the Law Symposium” at U.S. Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas. The conference, which was co-sponsored by Army Futures Command, the Strauss Center for International Security and...
