  The protection of non-combatants in times of (fully) autonomous warfare
raises the question of the timeliness of the international protective emblem.
Incidents in the recent past indicate that it is becoming necessary to transfer
the protective emblem to other dimensions of transmission and representation.
(Fully) Autonomous weapon systems are often launched from a great distance to
the aiming point and there may be no possibility for the operators to notice
protective emblems at the point of impact. In this case, the weapon system
would have to detect such protective emblems and, if necessary, disintegrate
autonomously or request an abort via human-in-the-loop. In our paper, we
suggest ways in which a cross-frequency protective emblem can be designed. On
the one hand, the technical deployment, e.g. in the form of RADAR beacons, is
considered, as well as the interpretation by methods of machine learning. With
regard to the technical deployment, possibilities are considered to address
different sensors and to send signals out as resiliently as possible. When
considering different signals, approaches are considered as to how software can
recognise the protective emblems under the influence of various boundary
conditions and react to them accordingly. In particular, a distinction is made
here between the recognition of actively emitted signals and passive protective
signals, e.g. the recognition of wounded or surrendering persons via
drone-based electro-optical and thermal cameras. Finally, methods of
distribution are considered, including encryption and authentication of the
received signal, and ethical aspects of possible misuse are examined.
