Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger has called for global rules to ensure that humans, rather than machines using artificial intelligence (AI), continue to decide when weapons are fired in war.
Papperger told dpa at the Eurosatory defence exhibition in Villepinte near Paris that technological possibilities in the defence industry were likely to expand exponentially over the next 10 years.
Rules would have to be set, similar to those governing nuclear weapons, to define clear limits, he said.
Papperger said such decisions could not be left to a company or an individual, but would have to be made through an ethics council or a UN resolution.
Rheinmetall makes drones, military vehicles and ships that can navigate autonomously, including with the help of AI applications.
Papperger stressed that humans always had the final say in autonomous weapons systems, meaning that a person decided whether force was used.
He said Rheinmetall did not manufacture any system in which a human being did not make the final decision, describing this as the company's ethical approach.
There was always a human in the loop, he said.
Technologically, it would already be possible to leave such decisions to AI, Papperger said. But Rheinmetall and its NATO customers did not want to do that, he added.
The situation would become difficult, however, if an enemy army in a conflict somewhere in the world took a different approach and left the final decision to AI.
Global rules were important to prevent that, Papperger said.
