21st Century war is increasing in speed, with conventional forces combined with massed use of autonomous systems and human-machine integration. However, a significant challenge is how humans can ensure moral and legal responsibility for systems operating outside of normal temporal parameters. This chapter considers whether humans can stand outside of real time and authorise actions for autonomous systems by the prior establishment of a contract, for actions to occur in a future context particularly in faster than real time or in very slow operations where human consciousness and concentration could not remain well informed. The medical legal precdent found in 'advance care directives' suggests how the time-consuming, deliberative process required for accountability and responsibility of weapons systems may be achievable outside real time captured in an 'advance control driective' (ACD). The chapter proposes 'autonomy command' scaffolded and legitimised through the construction of ACD ahead of the deployment of autonomous systems.

翻译：21世纪的战争正随着常规力量与大规模自主系统及人机融合的结合而加速。然而，一个重大挑战在于人类如何确保对在正常时间参数之外运行的系统承担道德与法律责任。本章探讨人类能否超越实时范畴，通过事先建立契约来授权自主系统在未来的情境中采取行动——尤其是在超实时或极慢速作战中（此时人类的意识与注意力无法保持充分知情）。医疗法律中"预先护理指令"的先例表明，为武器系统实现问责与责任所需的耗时协商过程，或许可以通过"预先控制指令"（ACD）在实时之外完成。本章提出，在部署自主系统之前，通过构建"预先控制指令"（ACD）来支撑并合法化"自主指挥"的概念。