One minor quibble followed by more disucssion (please correct me if I'm wrong, poor eyesight kept me out of the military so I never had to learn this for real): legal combatants "put on uniforms", but the threshold for this is fairly low, a distinctive armband is sufficient.
As you note, the rules of the game drastically change when combatants decline to be "legal", although from what little I know the Geneva Conventions do apply, just not in a way an illegal combatant will find appealing.
They are deliberately set up to so that there are strong incentives to stay within them, to not be an illegal combatant ... e.g. as far as the Conventions are concerned (not talking about what our Uniform Code of Military Niceness (UCMJ) or your equivalent says), as I understand it they can be executed out of hand if captured on the battlefield (I assume some due process is required, but only to establish their status).
E.g. as I recall, when we captured around a dozen non-uniformed Nazi saboteurs who'd been landed by sub? in the NE of the US during WWII, they were tried on that basis and then executed.
Similarly, in the GWOT, we are not obligated to treat captured illegal combatants as POWs, and have the option to interrogate them (e.g. Gitmo), something you're not allowed to do to a POW.
As you note, the rules of the game drastically change when combatants decline to be "legal", although from what little I know the Geneva Conventions do apply, just not in a way an illegal combatant will find appealing.
They are deliberately set up to so that there are strong incentives to stay within them, to not be an illegal combatant ... e.g. as far as the Conventions are concerned (not talking about what our Uniform Code of Military Niceness (UCMJ) or your equivalent says), as I understand it they can be executed out of hand if captured on the battlefield (I assume some due process is required, but only to establish their status).
E.g. as I recall, when we captured around a dozen non-uniformed Nazi saboteurs who'd been landed by sub? in the NE of the US during WWII, they were tried on that basis and then executed.
Similarly, in the GWOT, we are not obligated to treat captured illegal combatants as POWs, and have the option to interrogate them (e.g. Gitmo), something you're not allowed to do to a POW.