Weapons Law
Diverging Standards in the Legal Review of LAWS
In May 2025, Anduril Industries publicly unveiled Fury (YFQ-44A), a next-generation autonomous aircraft currently under evaluation by the U.S. Air Force as part of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Fury takes its first test flights this summer. The goal...
Ukraine Symposium – Captured Enemy Weapons
The Russian military has fielded a new weapon in its conflict with Ukraine. In recent weeks, at least one frontline Russian unit was observed operating an American-made Bradley M2A2 infantry fighting vehicle, and Russia is believed to possess nearly a dozen others....
Leaving Ottawa: Lithuania Denounces the Anti-Personnel Mines Convention
Significant changes are happening on NATO’s eastern flank. In 2024 Lithuania denounced the Convention on Cluster Munitions. More recently, on May 8, 2025, Lithuania announced its decision to withdraw from the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling,...
The Disarmament Treaties Prohibiting Anti-Personnel Mines and Cluster Munitions: Separating Fact from Fiction
In recent months, there has been considerable criticism in scholarship, and in opinion editorials in several newspapers, of the content and impact of the two conventional disarmament treaties: the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production...
Cluster Munitions and Anti-Personnel Land Mines: An Explainer
Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has ignited discussions within and between NATO States concerning the international conventions that ban the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions and anti-personnel landmines, and require the destruction...
Assessing the Ottawa Anti-Personnel Mine Convention Withdrawals
As security along their borders has deteriorated, Eastern European, Baltic, and Nordic States have scrambled to update and adapt their national defense strategies. Nearly all these States have publicly committed to significantly increase defense spending. To...
Booby-traps and “Apparently Harmless” Portable Objects
Recent hostilities in eastern Europe and the Middle East have generated significant interest in issues of law of armed conflict (LOAC) compliance. Notably, several incidents have led to close scrutiny of the LOAC rules on the use of booby-traps (see e.g., here, here,...
The Future of Warfare: National Positions on the Governance of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems
Lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), such as drones and autonomous missile systems, are no longer a theoretical concern. Indeed, they are finding their way onto the battlefield. Amid growing international concern, States have articulated a range of positions on...
Ukraine Symposium – The Budapest Memorandum’s History and Role in the Conflict
Last month of 2024 marked the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Budapest Memorandum, part of an agreement by which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in return for security assurances by Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The Memorandum, signed...
The Drone Threat, the Laser Response, and the Law – Part II
The first part of this two-part post, described and explained the weapons law principles and rules that apply to suicide or kamikaze drones. It also set forth and explained applicable targeting law principles and rules and addressed the legality of mass attacks...
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....
Dutch District Court Judgment on Military Support to and Trade with Israel
On Friday 13 December 2024, the District Court of the Hague handed down its judgment in a torts case related to the Netherlands’ military support to and trade cooperation with Israel. Al-Haq and nine other civil society organizations (referred to collectively as...
