Research Information System
in: Security of the Future, Ahmet Yıldız, Editor, Tasam Yayınları, İstanbul, pp.1-427, 2019
Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS) enable operating almost independent from human intervention by providing continuous monitoring, data collection, and processing great mount of data in a short-time period. In that respect, AWS have been desired for Indigenous Defense Industry Countries (IDIC) such as India, Israel, and Turkey. However, different from military hardware supplies, these systems require massive amount of research and development and maintenance. As a result, there are emerging challenges that AWS present for the new comers such as these countries must have to invest in software and infrastructure at least the amount they have done for traditional weapons. Preliminary findings suggest that AWS will change the perception of massive-size army, so that considerable physical military capacity will not make sense as in traditional quantitative terms, while out-fashioned technologies need to be converted, and this will add to the amount of military spending. Therefore, it would be fair to claim that the sooner IDIC face those challenges, and fosters technological adaptations, the faster they would be able to attain their indigenous military self-sufficiency. Evidently, this growing self-reliance is likely to have an impact on global and regional security solutions.
Key Words: Autonomous Weapons, Indigenization, Defense Industries, Regional Security, Military