Governance and Ethical Challenges of Artificial Intelligence in Warfare

The sudden integration of AI in today's workflow has made urgent ethical and governance discussions on accountability, bias, and human agency in making lethal decisions. This review looks into the ethics of military AI technologies: autonomous weapon systems (aerospace systems), AI-supported surveillance and targeting algorithms, and assesses the governance regimes created to minimize risks. Just-war theory continues to act as the moral compass. Still, it tells us little about the complications specific to AI, namely convoluted accountability chains and algorithmic biases that harm civilians [1], [2]. This paper has exposed these fundamentally disparate pathways worldwide through the comparative analysis of new ethical frameworks. The IEEE Global Initiative supports human control and transparency. At the same time, the Department of Defense in the United States prefers reliability from a technical point of view. At the same time, the EU grounds any human decision on actions that cause death and destruction [3]–[5]. The Russian-Ukrainian war misuses facial recognition and places AI-guided systems for airstrikes in the 2023 Gaza conflict, at the historical case studies of recent wars that indicate deep-rooted systemic flaws in the governance architectures, such as biased mitigation and accountability [6], [7]. The study identifies three critical gaps in current policies: (1) insufficient mechanisms for auditing biased algorithms, (2) ambiguous legal responsibility for AWS outcomes, and (3) fragmented international regulatory efforts. The paper proposes a hybrid governance model combining rigorous ethical auditing, interoperable technical standards, and binding multilateral agreements to address these. Findings underscore the urgent need for interdisciplinary collaboration among technologists, ethicists, and policymakers to align AI advancements with international humanitarian law. Without proactive measures, the unchecked proliferation of military AI risks destabilizing global security and eroding public trust in automated defense systems [8].