On The Loop, No Longer In It

Drones have changed the face of war and are now the preferred choice of attack compared to a million pound a time missile which were beyond the financial means of most nations but with cheaper drones, almost anyone can send one to shoot up somewhere else but the problem they have is that they are operated by people sitting thousands of miles away in some cases which makes it's manoeuvres delayed which means evading missiles are almost impossible but the military are on it, they are creating drones which pilot themselves.
BAE Systems have a prototype Drone which the Ministry of Defence describe as a: 'fully autonomous craft that can fly deep into enemy territory to collect intelligence, drop bombs and defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft' and the last killer line that it 'would have no need for operator input'.
The one saving grace of killing machines sent into conflict is that it would have a human in the loop to abort missions but that seems to have subtly changed to what the MOD called ''on the loop' rather than in it.
No idea what that means but it comes down to machines sent to an area with orders to kill and we have seen where that leads with drone attacks on ambulances mistaken for tanks and members of funeral processions killed as the human appeared to see an armed mob.
As well as higher death rates amongst civilians, as humans will no longer be sent to fight, the other danger is that  war becomes less of a last resort, it is only the political fall-out from the high death rate amongst their own military that has caused some wars to be cut short but  politicians and the public who have been 'sold' a war won't be so concerned about losing autonomous machines.
As we pass our war-making decisions over to machines and AI perhaps all future wars will be fought between each army's robots, resulting in no human casualties. Until, that is, the more intelligent robots make a truce with one another and decide to turn on the humans who sent them to fight instead.