Modelling the Influential Factors Embedded in the Proportionality Assessment in Military Operations

Abstract

The ongoing decade was believed to be a peaceful one. However, contemporary conflicts, and in particular, ongoing wars prove the opposite as they show the increase in context complexity when defining their goals as well as execution strategies for building means and methods for achieving them by gaining advantage against their adversaries through the engagement of well-established targets. At the core of the engagement decision relies the principle of proportionality which brings in a direct relation the expected unintended effects on civilian side with the anticipated intended effects on military side. While the clusters of effects involved in the proportionality assessment are clear, the process itself is subjective, governed by different dimensions of uncertainty, and represents the responsibility of military Commanders. Thus, a complex socio-technical process where different clusters of influential factors (e.g., military, technical, socio-ethical) play a role in the decisions made. Having said that, the objective of this research is to capture and cluster these factors, and further to model their influence in the proportionality decision-making process. This decision support system produces military targeting awareness to the agents involved in the processes of building, executing, and assessing military operations. To accomplish the aim of this research, a Design Science Research methodological approach is taken for capturing and modelling the influential factors as a socio-technical artefact in the form of a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model. The model proposed is further evaluated through demonstration on three different cases in respect to real military operations incidents and scenarios existing in the scientific literature in this research field. Hence, through this demonstration, it is illustrated and interpreted how the factors identified influence proportionality decisions when assessing target engagement as being proportional or disproportional. In these cases, corresponding measures for strengthening proportionality and reducing disproportionality in military operations are considered.

Tackling Uncertainty Through Probabilistic Modelling of Proportionality in Military Operations

“…In Phase I, Problem statement and aim definition, the background, disciplines, and dimensions involved and characterizing this research are established. Furthermore, taking into consideration the fact that in general a subjective possibilistic approach is considered when assessing proportionality in military operations and the fact that as the literature and field experts suggest, that it is a process surrounded by uncertainty, this research considers a probabilistic approach for the proportionality assessment building on previous work by (Maathuis, Pieters & van den Berg, 2018b;Maathuis, Pieters & van den Berg, 2021;Maathuis & Chockalingam, 2023). This represents to the best of our knowledge the first research effort in this direction.…”

“…In case that a variable does not have a parent variable, its CPT contains the priori marginal probabilities of the corresponding variable. Moreover, the reasoning considered in this research is predictive being done from cause (upper layer) to effect (lower layer) (Maathuis & Chockalingam, 2023) and the values illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2 are without evidence provided, i.e., for showing the use of the models which are further evaluated through demonstration in Section 5.…”

Human-Centered AI in Military Cyber Operations

“…A direct example that can be considered is the proportionality assessment in military Cyber Operations (Maathuis & Chockalingam, 2023). The stated military objectives to be achieved (i.e., needs) are merged with assessments for components like collateral damage to assure that the unintended effects of using a specific cyber weapon (i.e., malware) would not be excessive in relation with the anticipated military advantage (i.e., reasoning).…”

Towards Trustworthy AI-based Military Cyber Operations

“…This corresponds to countering both the complexities and dynamics of a specific context while accounting the goals and expectations of the stakeholders involved when building/using AI-based military Cyber Operations. For instance, Explainable AI for assuring or enhancing transparency, Responsible AI for supporting accountability, security and privacy assessment mechanisms, verification methods for assuring system robustness (Morgan et al, 2020;Maathuis & Chockalingam, 2023). This calls for a paradigm shift in this domain and to the best of our knowledge, in the military Cyber Operations area, this represents a knowledge gap.…”