The increasing autonomy of military technologies has sparked intense ethical debates, particularly regarding the morality of lethal autonomous weapons systems (AWS). Central questions include whether the shift from human to autonomous targeting reduces or increases moral-psychological harm, and more generally, how we should examine the moral-psychological dimensions of AWS. Currently, legal and ethical discussions predominantly rely on Just War Theory, related abstract principles, and hypothetical scenarios. While these offer important normative arguments regarding AWS, they provide limited insights into the daily realities of combatants operating such systems. Our approach focuses on the lived experiences of AWS operators to explore moral judgment as a lived process of meaning-making by these practitioners. While some advocates suggest AWS could shield combatants from moral-psychological harm, our analysis challenges this assumption. By integrating abstract ethical arguments with insights from combatants’ lived experiences, including a secondary analysis of an empirical case study, we identify both persistent and additional moral-psychological risks associated with AWS. Furthermore, our analysis yields a preliminary framework for future research and practice. Control, responsibility, and trust emerge as key concepts bridging abstract and empirical research, essential for comprehensively examining and mitigating moral-psychological harm in the context of AWS.