  21st Century war is increasing in speed, with conventional forces combined
with massed use of autonomous systems and human-machine integration. However, a
significant challenge is how humans can ensure moral and legal responsibility
for systems operating outside of normal temporal parameters. This chapter
considers whether humans can stand outside of real time and authorise actions
for autonomous systems by the prior establishment of a contract, for actions to
occur in a future context particularly in faster than real time or in very slow
operations where human consciousness and concentration could not remain well
informed. The medical legal precdent found in 'advance care directives'
suggests how the time-consuming, deliberative process required for
accountability and responsibility of weapons systems may be achievable outside
real time captured in an 'advance control driective' (ACD). The chapter
proposes 'autonomy command' scaffolded and legitimised through the construction
of ACD ahead of the deployment of autonomous systems.
