Latest
  1. Johns Hopkins Bayview tells 3,182 patients an employee put their health data into a public AI tool
  2. China’s AI compute access expected to double in 2027, with US-designed chips about 65 per cent
  3. UK commits £100m to national AI Biosecurity Lab
  4. Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3.1 Pro with 1-million-token context window
  5. Residents in Newport and Cardiff oppose hyperscale datacentres near homes
  6. Study: Grok 4.7 picked Republicans in 92% of forced midterm answers, GPT-6.1 Sol picked Democrats in 97%
  7. Attackers exploiting the PHP flaws hand the break-in to AI agents, Unit 42 says
  8. Elvis Presley’s rightsholders sue Anthropic over training on 274 songs

Latest / Defence and security

Rule changeDefenceUSConfirmed

Pentagon updates its autonomous weapons directive, DoD Directive 3000.09

See how this story connects

Source: U.S. Department of Defense, DoD Directive 3000.09Also reported by DefenseScoop, DOD News (GlobalSecurity.org copy)

The US Department of Defense reissued Directive 3000.09, Autonomy in Weapon Systems, on 25 January 2023, replacing the 2012 version. Approved by Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, it keeps the rule that systems must let commanders and operators exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force. Autonomous weapons that need senior review must be approved before formal development by the under secretaries for policy and for research and engineering and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and again before fielding.

Why it matters

Contractors building autonomous weapons for the US military have a current approval path, and the directive is the policy later US programmes such as Replicator had to work within.

When
25 Jan 2023
ID
WTA-N-2023-0044
Who
Department of Defense; Kathleen Hicks

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from U.S. Department of Defense, DoD Directive 3000.09 and the reporting credited above. Checked against the source on 9 Oct 2026.

Read the original at U.S. Department of Defense, DoD Directive 3000.09

Source copy: download the page text as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: Led toPentagon announces Replicator to field thousands of cheap autonomous systems

Cite this story

WTA-N-2023-0044: “Pentagon updates its autonomous weapons directive, DoD Directive 3000.09.” wheresthe.ai, 25 Jan 2023. https://wheresthe.ai/d/us-dod-directive-3000-09-update-2023-01/ (source: U.S. Department of Defense, DoD Directive 3000.09).

Spotted an error? Email [email protected].