You also can’t kill surrendered enemies, but that’s not what the situation was here. Though for drones (and airpower in general, or even things like artillery) surrendering is obviously more-problematic than it was in an era when infantry did a larger chunk of the killing.
I do recall reading about one point where a Russian soldier did surrender to a Ukrainian drone, and they led him to captivity with the drone, but obviously that’s an unusual case; both the drone operator and the surrendering soldier have to go out of their way to make that work.
Surrender to drone may never become common. Accepting a surrender incurs substantial risk, and the relief of not needing to kill someone in person is probably psychologically important to the decision to accept that risk. I am sure that remote kills/captures operate under different moral calculus.
You also can’t kill surrendered enemies, but that’s not what the situation was here. Though for drones (and airpower in general, or even things like artillery) surrendering is obviously more-problematic than it was in an era when infantry did a larger chunk of the killing.
I do recall reading about one point where a Russian soldier did surrender to a Ukrainian drone, and they led him to captivity with the drone, but obviously that’s an unusual case; both the drone operator and the surrendering soldier have to go out of their way to make that work.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/europe/russian-soldier-surrenders-drone-bakhmut-ukraine-intl-hnk/index.html
There are no accepted conventions today to facilitate that sort of thing, and the technology isn’t terribly well-suited to it.
Surrender to drone may never become common. Accepting a surrender incurs substantial risk, and the relief of not needing to kill someone in person is probably psychologically important to the decision to accept that risk. I am sure that remote kills/captures operate under different moral calculus.