letter Monday to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth<\/a> demanding clarification on how the updated directive would ensure the U.S. and its servicemembers are not harmed by autonomous weapons.\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Arizona Democrat asserted that Trump\u2019s update to Directive 3000.09 will increase the risk of harm to civilians.<\/p>\n
Defining \u201chuman oversight\u201d is a challenge, Lushenko said. The concepts of meaningful human control and appropriate human judgment are open to interpretation, and that\u2019s complicated by an argument that checks can be incorporated into the design of autonomous weapons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Jovana Davidovic, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies military ethics, said developers have a responsibility for the actions of any AI system they create.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more autonomous the system is, the more the decisions that developers make ultimately drive outcomes,\u201d she said by email. Tsotniashvili said codifying Directive 3000.09 is necessary but insufficient, and more specifics are needed to ensure human oversight is \u201cmeaningful rather than ceremonial.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 2027 NDAA provision is a step forward,\u201d he said. \u201cBut without accompanying accountability mechanisms, it may succeed in preserving the appearance of human control while the substance of it continues to erode.\u201d<\/p>\n
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/cronkitenews.azpbs.org\/2026\/06\/15\/mark-kelly-amendment-defense-bill-ai-powered-kill-chain\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/cronkitenews.azpbs.org”>Cronkite News<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cronkitenews.azpbs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/favicon1.png?resize=85%2C85&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSen. Kelly amendment in defense bill would ensure \u2018ultimate human responsibility\u2019 in AI-powered kill chain<\/p>\n
Katie O’Shaughnessy and Carsten Oyer, Cronkite News
\nJune 15, 2026<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2013 A Senate committee that oversees the Pentagon has adopted a measure from Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly intended to require \u201cultimate human responsibility\u201d in the use of force.<\/p>\n
The U.S. and other nations are increasingly deploying autonomous weapons systems, and the use of artificial intelligence has escalated rapidly in the U.S. war with Iran and the Russia-Ukraine war.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCongress is responding to a public and allied concern that the United States could find itself legally and ethically exposed if autonomous systems cause civilian casualties without any clear human decision-maker in the chain,\u201d Zaza Tsotniashvili, a professor at Caucasus International University in Tbilisi, Georgia, said by email.<\/p>\n
Kelly, a Democrat who served as a Navy combat pilot, added his provision to the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act. It codifies a 2023 Defense Department policy called Directive 3000.09, which requires human oversight in the use of autonomous weapons \u2013 military systems that operate without human intervention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On June 5, President Donald Trump issued an update to that directive ordering the Pentagon to \u201celiminate unnecessary barriers to rapid deployment\u201d of AI within 90 days. Kelly\u2019s amendment would override that, if it survives the legislative process, by blocking the elimination of human involvement in the \u201ckill chain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Senate Armed Services Committee approved the amendment Thursday and sent the bill to the full Senate on an 18-9 vote.<\/p>\n
Kelly ultimately voted against the NDAA despite the inclusion of the AI provision and other amendments he supported. He cited the $1.15 trillion price tag and lack of transparency, as shown by Trump\u2019s defiance of Congress in going to war with Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot write them another blank check,\u201d Kelly said last week in a statement explaining his opposition to the bill.<\/p>\n
AI use by the U.S. armed forces has been in the spotlight in recent months.<\/p>\n
In February, Anthropic\u2019s AI tool, Claude, was used in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Claude was also used on the first day of Operation Epic Fury in Iran, with speculation that it was involved in a missile attack on a school near a military base that killed 175 people, mostly young girls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Following that strike, technology scholar Kevin Baker argued that the AI program used to identify targets \u2013 known as Maven Smart System \u2013 and the officials behind it bore much more responsibility than Claude. Baker said old information led Maven to target the school, which was part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound until 2016 at the latest.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople failed to update a database, and other people built a system fast enough to make that failure lethal,\u201d Baker wrote in The Guardian.<\/p>\n
Maven, engineered by Palantir Technologies in 2017, was built to analyze intelligence data and evaluate what targets to strike. The New Yorker reported that it took a person four clicks to go from target identification to target destruction, making Maven a multi-year project in using AI to compress the kill chain.<\/p>\n
Kelly\u2019s amendment also comes while Trump works to speed up the military\u2019s adoption of AI.<\/p>\n
The effort to put legal guardrails on AI when it comes to lethal use of force earned praise from some experts.<\/p>\n
Paul Lushenko, a non-resident expert at the nonprofit organization RegulatingAI and lecturer at George Washington University, called it a \u201clegal, moral, ethical imperative.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a perception shared among the military and the public that there ought to be human oversight of these capabilities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tools like Maven have been strong assets for ensuring national defense, Lushenko said, but guidelines are imperative for how they are used and who is held accountable for misuse.<\/p>\n
Such guidelines will have to come from civilian overseers, internal military culture and technological guardrails.<\/p>\n
Tsotniashvili said the Defense Department\u2019s policies aren\u2019t stable enough for Congress to remain silent.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoD directives can be reinterpreted, waived or quietly revised by the executive branch without congressional approval,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s memorandum said the deployment of AI technologies must come while \u201cmaintaining rigorous oversight.\u201d It does not specify who would conduct such oversight or what that would look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmbiguity serves the interest of those deploying these systems,\u201d Tsotniashvili said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sen. Ruben Gallego sent a letter Monday to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanding clarification on how the updated directive would ensure the U.S. and its servicemembers are not harmed by autonomous weapons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Arizona Democrat asserted that Trump\u2019s update to Directive 3000.09 will increase the risk of harm to civilians.<\/p>\n
Defining \u201chuman oversight\u201d is a challenge, Lushenko said. The concepts of meaningful human control and appropriate human judgment are open to interpretation, and that\u2019s complicated by an argument that checks can be incorporated into the design of autonomous weapons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Jovana Davidovic, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies military ethics, said developers have a responsibility for the actions of any AI system they create.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more autonomous the system is, the more the decisions that developers make ultimately drive outcomes,\u201d she said by email. Tsotniashvili said codifying Directive 3000.09 is necessary but insufficient, and more specifics are needed to ensure human oversight is \u201cmeaningful rather than ceremonial.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 2027 NDAA provision is a step forward,\u201d he said. \u201cBut without accompanying accountability mechanisms, it may succeed in preserving the appearance of human control while the substance of it continues to erode.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.<\/p>\n
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