Targeting
Judging Battlefield Conduct
Editors’ note: This post is based on the author’s article-length work, “The Rule of Law in Armed Conflict” published in volume 34 of the Minnesota Journal of International Law (2025). The rule of law is an appraisal concept that purports to restrict arbitrariness in...
Targeting Iranian Spy Ships
On March 17, 2025, Al-Hadath, a Saudi news outlet, reported that U.S. forces in the Middle East had targeted and sunk Iran’s newest signals intelligence (SIGINT) ship, the IRINS Zagros (H313), while the spy ship was on station in the Red Sea. Both U.S. and Iranian...
Ukraine Symposium – Terrorizing Civilians and the Law of Armed Conflict
Reports from the Kherson Oblast, an area of Ukraine the Ukrainian military recaptured in November 2022, indicate that the Russian military is using drones to target Ukrainian civilians as part of a systematic effort to terrorize the civilian population (see also here,...
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...
