Moral decision making in network enabled operations
Christine Boshuijzen-van Burken · TU/e Research Portal · 2014
DGS stands for Distributed Ground System.It monitors real time video feed from unmanned aerial vehicles hovering the skies over any military area of operation.The DGS servicemembers process, exploit, and disseminate the video feed, providing intelligence to the ground commanders and war-fighting forces.9 Laster and Iannotta gave this account of the Sangin fratricide incident based on transcripts of interviews conducted by Marine Corps investigators and the detailed timeline contained in the report.All times are local Afghanistan time.10 More on moral decision making follows in Section 1.5.2005).Different countries refer to NEO in different terms, for example, Network ____________________________________________________________________ 11 In this dissertation the term NEO or NEOs is used, which is equivalent to NEC (Network Enabled Capability), NCW (Network Enabled Warfare), NBD (Network Based Defence), and the like. Moral Decision Making in Network Enabled Operations 6Van Bezooijen (2011) investigated psychologically relevant characteristics of coordination in virtual teams and a special annual conference is devoted to this topic (International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (ICCRTS)) 12 .In this dissertation, the term 'network' should be understood in a broad sense.It is the agglomerate of technology and organizations, which is broader than a social network or a strictly technological network.NEOs exist of a combination of ICT, technological assets (such as weapons), organization and people.In essence, the potential of NEO is to achieve enhanced military effect through the better use of information and collaboration.From the Sangin case that was presented above, it becomes clear that it is not necessarily true that NEO leads to better military effect.In this incident a marine staff sergeant and a navy hospitalman were killed during a mission to sweep a stretch of farmland and residential compounds along a key road in the Sangin Valley.They were killed by their own forces that were operating from thousands of miles away from where the incident took place.The empirical facts of this incident have been scrutinized in legal and technical reports describing the incident, trying to sort out how this could have happened and who was to blame (see Laster and Iannotta: 2012).This case has philosophically relevant aspects too, that will be systematically addressed in this dissertation.They relate to moral decision making (the focus of this dissertation) in networked military operations (the context of this dissertation).1.2.Research on moral decision making in networked military operations: the current landscape The key place to look for literature on moral decision making in NEO are the knowledge platforms for network enabled operations, of which the largest is ICCRTS.Their proceedings give no suggestions on the research on ethical issues or moral decision making.Further literature search in different military