At present, no commonly agreed definition of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) but they are generally assumed to be weapons systems that, upon activation by a human user, use the processing of sensor data to select and engage targets with lethal force with little or no further human intervention.

Such systems are already appearing on battlefields, endangering civilians, and there are still no binding international rules to govern them.

130 states support the need for new legally binding rules on autonomous weapons although the UK is not one of them. This will be discussed at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Review Conference in Geneva in November 2026.