The programme

LACMO's research is organized around a number of broad themes, each of which contains a number of projects. These are:

• Legal bases for the use of force and military operations: old law and new challenges;
• International humanitarian law and human rights law in contemporary armed conflicts: challenges, dilemmas and prospects;
• The development of international military operational law as a new sub discipline within public international law and its relationship with and contribution to public international law;
• Cyber warfare and cyber security; applying international law to new security challenges from a military perspective
• New technologies and armed conflict: weapons of the future and the law of the past.

The primary aim of the research group and focus of the research programme is to investigate the role of law, in particular public international law, in relation to a wide variety of military operations and security challenges. It is aimed at exploring and explaining the legal bases and regimes which are applicable to such operations in a changing environment and providing legal guidance on how these relate to each other and influence and regulate how military operations are planned and conducted.

LACMO Research Network

The cooperation with other universities and defence colleges is organized around a research consortium operating under the name of ‘LACMO Research Network’. The research network is based upon a framework agreement for organizing joint projects, conducting  cooperative research , joint supervision of PhD projects and exchange of personnel. As of October 2022 it comprised more than 20 research groups from as many universities and military staff colleges and academies in Europe, North America and Asia and the Pacific. 

Staff involved

External Senior Researchers

Rogier Bartels

Hans Boddens Hosang

Jeroen van den Boogaard

Martin Fink

Christophe Paulussen

Kinga Tibori Szabo

Joop Voetelink

Peter Pijpers

External Junior Researchers

1. Ardan Folwaij
   The legality of military human performance in the military domain
2. Raïssa van den Essen
   Targeting in Cyber Warfare: The Triangular Relation Between the Notions of ‘Attack’ (49 API), ‘Military Objectives’ (52 API) and ‘Collateral Damage’ (57 API) in Cyber Targeting Decisions
3. Bas van Hoek
   Legal Oversight on the Use of Force in Military Operations; Dutch legal oversight procedures reviewed.
4. Klaudia Klonowska
   Intra-actions of Human Judgment, AI Decision-Support Technologies, and International Law in Contemporary Military Decision-Making
5. Jonathan Kwik
   Legal obligations attached to the incorporation of artificial intelligence into weapon systems under international humanitarian law
6. Mark Roorda
   Unmanned weapon systems in military operations. An interdisciplinary normative framework: combining military operational, legal and ethical aspects in bounding the use of unmanned weapon systems in the targeting process
7. Karoly Vegh
   The applicability of international human rights law for the conduct of extraterritorial information and influence operations by states
8. Taylor Woodcock
   (Un)Lawful delegation of military conduct to artificial intelligence enabled technologies and a framework for compliance with international law