Congress to require rundown from DOD on approvals and deployments of autonomous weapons

The annual defense authorization bill released Saturday would require Defense Department officials to provide annual updates to lawmakers with details on approvals and deployments of lethal autonomous weapon systems by the U.S. military.

Last year, the Pentagon updated DOD Directive 3000.09, “Autonomy in Weapon Systems,” which provides guidance for officials who will be responsible for overseeing the design, development, acquisition, testing, fielding and employment of these types of capabilities — and created a new working group to facilitate senior-level reviews of the technology.

The department defines an autonomous weapon system as “a weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by an operator. This includes, but is not limited to, operator-supervised autonomous weapon systems that are designed to allow operators to override operation of the weapon system, but can select and engage targets without further operator input after activation.”

A semi-autonomous weapon system is defined as “a weapon system that, once activated, is intended to only engage individual targets or specific target groups that have been selected by an operator.” So-called “fire and forget” or lock-on-after-launch homing munitions are some examples.

According to the guidance, with some exceptions, before autonomous weapons can enter formal development they must be approved by the undersecretary of defense for policy, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Additionally, the officials in those roles must sign off again before they can be fielded.

However, since the directive was updated, Pentagon officials have been tight-lipped publicly about where things stand about specific platforms that have gone through these types of reviews and signoffs, and the outcomes of those reviews.

The conferenced version of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act would require the secretary of defense, no later than Dec. 31, 2025, and annually after that, to provide the congressional defense committees a “comprehensive report” on the approval and deployment of lethal autonomous weapon systems by Uncle Sam.

The documents must include “a comprehensive list of any lethal autonomous weapon systems that have been approved by senior defense officials for use by the United States military under Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, or any successor document, and the dates of such approvals”; any systems that have received a waiver of the requirement for review by senior DOD officials, and the dates such waivers were issued; and systems that are undergoing review.

Additionally, it would require the Pentagon to provide a comprehensive list of any lethal autonomous weapon systems that were not approved after review.

Notably for public transparency, each report would have to be submitted in unclassified form. However, they could also include a classified annex, according to the bill.

The reporting requirements would terminate on Dec. 31, 2029, unless lawmakers extend them.

The annual NDAA, which is often described as “must-pass” legislation, has to be approved by both chambers of Congress and signed by the president before it’s enacted.