Other areas of military law have analogues to the vying demands of combatants and noncombatants in the application of military force. The JER implements or supplements a confusing patchwork of statutes and regulations. Detailed ethical rules that only lawyers are competent to interpret unavoidably create the unfortunate appearance that ethical advice is only a matter of finding loopholes. The law-morality pattern of ethical issues is seen best in the expanding role of military lawyers in planning and waging military operations. International law requires nations to ensure respect for the law of war, and so military lawyers have for decades been responsible for instructing military personnel in the law of war and for inculcating in them respect for law.
Military lawyers are also responsible for reviewing proposed weapons systems.
More importantly, Department of Defense directives now require military lawyers to review war plans for compliance with domestic law and the law of war. In the Gulf War frequently called the most legalistic war ever lawyers reviewed every target to be struck in the air campaign. Their advice addressed such difficult issues as striking electric power grids as strategic targets and attacking mobile Scud-launchers on highways even though they could not be distinguished from civilian vehicles at night. The changing nature of warfare, together with the expanded role of military lawyers in war planning, raises unprecedented issues for military lawyers. There is, for example, the issue of who the lawyer's client is.