ABSTRACT
A military aeroplane is particularly important to set out what a warship implies as such ships form an important part of the war-waging machinery. International organisations can also be belligerents. Some have held that it is somehow incompatible with the tasks of the United Nations to claim that the organisation is involved in a war. In inter-State wars the belligerents are States and the combatants the members of their armed forces. Unlawful or illegal combatants thus either are members of the regular forces or members of resistance, guerrilla movements, or which is nowadays often the case terrorists, all of whom do not fulfil the conditions of lawful combatants. The main characteristics of a combatant, which have been used to apply to members of the regular forces as well, were initially designed precisely to cover certain irregular forces which merited being included under the ambit of the Law of War.
