Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

The purpose of this study was to gain a greater understanding of potential challenges from a moral stress perspective that Swedish military leaders can face when implementing autonomous weapons systems. Two questions were asked to investigate this: what demands may arise and how can leaders be impacted?

The study was conducted as a literature study and data from nine peer reviewed articles and a research report from the Swedish Defense Research Institute were analyzed via thematic analysis. The result seems to show that the lack of control, the lack of trust and difficulty in demanding responsibility from an autonomous weapon system creates moral leadership challenges. Without control over the autonomous weapon system, the consequences of its actions risk going against the leader's moral and this creates problems with how leadership can and should be conducted. The study also seems to show that autonomous weapon systems can lead to a moral impact on leaders, since autonomous weapon systems risk leading to increased distancing and risking contributing to increased violence. Given the moral leadership challenges and the moral influence made visible in this study, there seems to be a great risk of moral stress and even moral injury if autonomous weapon systems are used for actions that go against the leader's morality.