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Understanding

Core military values form the ethical backbone of military conduct and decision-making. While these values may be expressed differently across countries and branches, they are universally anchored in principles such as integrity, duty, courage, loyalty, and selflessness. These values prioritise the mission, the team, and the nation above personal interests, requiring the moral fortitude to make the right decisions even under the most challenging circumstances.

For AI developers working on military tools, understanding these values is essential. Systems must be designed to align with military ethics, supporting decision-making in complex operational environments while upholding these principles.

Military values promote behaviours critical to service, such as discipline, teamwork, and the prioritisation of collective goals over individual ones. By instilling these principles and fostering leadership that embodies them, militaries aim to ensure decisions in extreme scenarios are both operationally effective and ethically guided. While each country will articulate the values they expect from their military personnel in slightly different ways, there is also a huge similarity between the values of military organisations around the world—for good reason. There are certain types of behaviours that are consistent with military service. This tends to mean a focus on the bigger picture—mission, team or country above oneself, for example, or the courage to do the right thing despite personal cost. These institutions hope that, by fostering such behaviours, and promoting those who consistently demonstrate them, they will end up with the right people in the right places—people who will be able to make the right decision even in the most extreme of situations.
These values are also key to maintaining trust—internally within the military and externally with the public—while ensuring compliance with international standards and reinforcing professionalism.

2. What are the core values of the UK Armed Forces?
While the MOD as a whole emphasises values such as integrity, respect for others, and commitment, each branch of the Armed Forces articulates these principles uniquely:

These values collectively ensure that MOD personnel conduct themselves ethically and professionally, both within the UK and during overseas operations.

Obedience is fundamental in military operations, but it is not absolute. Soldiers are expected to follow lawful commands while also being trained to recognise and challenge orders that are unlawful or unethical. Legal frameworks such as the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) provide clear boundaries—for example, prohibiting actions like targeting civilians—but these are insufficient to address the nuanced ethical dilemmas of modern warfare.
Simply following rules will get you so far, but knowing what the right thing to do when the rules are unclear is also essential. Ethical failures by the military can have terrible consequences for a huge range of people, including the local civilian populations and the combatants on both sides of a conflict, for the internal health of the military organisation itself, for the relationship between the military and society, and for the strategic utility of forces engaged on behalf of their political community.
AI tools used in military settings must account for these complexities. Rather than solely optimising for legal compliance, these systems should evaluate actions against ethical considerations. This includes identifying decisions that, while lawful, may conflict with military values or lead to unintended moral consequences.

4. How can understanding ethics complement legal understanding?
One of the questions that often arises is why is this an ethics issue rather than simply a legal one? Every professional military around the world is supposed to fulfil its international obligations and ensure that the Law of Armed Conflict is taught and refreshed each year to all serving military personnel, both in peacetime and in wartime. If this is done properly, doesn’t this make military ethics education redundant? Clearly there is a great deal of overlap between the two areas of ethics and law. However, sometimes the contemporary operating environment presents situations in which it might not be clear what the legal position actually is. For example, the 1990 edition of the US Small Wars Manual makes clear: “[s]mall wars demand the highest type of leadership directed by intelligence, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. Small wars are conceived in uncertainty, are conducted often with precarious responsibility and doubtful authority, under indeterminate orders lacking specific instructions.”

By incorporating frameworks for ethical reasoning, they can support decision-making in situations where legal guidance is ambiguous. This ensures that personnel assess not only the legality of an action but also its alignment with the ethical standards of their profession. Even where the framework of the law is absolutely clear, and the range of legally permissible options can be clearly identified, the law is still not enough on its own to provide the actual answers. A decision still needs to be made as to which course of action one should take.  Military decision-making requires the ability to answer questions such ‘Would such an action be lawful in this situation?’ but it also needs people who will also ask ‘This course of action is legal but is it actually the right thing to do?’ The best decision-making will therefore be informed by both ethical and legal considerations if the appropriate and most desirable outcome is to be achieved.

Military personnel are trained to balance obedience with ethical judgement, particularly when orders conflict with broader principles. For developers of military AI, this presents critical design challenges. AI tools must empower users to critically evaluate decisions and adapt to changing circumstances while remaining aligned with strategic and ethical goals. Such systems should support professional dissent, encouraging critical thinking and enabling personnel to raise concerns where actions deviate from ethical norms. For example, AI-driven decision-support tools could integrate features to flag potential conflicts between actions and military values, equipping users with the information to make informed and morally sound choices. [Source]

One can easily see that military service appears to require a disciplined obedience and that this must be maintained, so that orders in the face of overwhelming danger on the battlefield will be obeyed without hesitation. But that does not mean that asking questions is universally discouraged – often quite the opposite. The UK’s Chilcott Inquiry launched in the aftermath of the highly controversial invasion of Iraq argued clearly for more challenge rather than less to ensure operational effectiveness. The inquiry noted in excruciating detail significant failures in the planning of the campaign and specifically focused on the dangers of groupthink and how detrimental this was for effective organisational culture. While some life-and-death situations may require an instant response, the need for discipline is all too often used as an excuse not to listen to or offer alternative views when there is the time and opportunity.