Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
AI The Military Government United States

Iran War Provides a Large-Scale Test For AI-Assisted Warfare 113

Posted by BeauHD from the new-era-of-warfare dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, written by Katrina Manson: The U.S. strikes on Iran ordered by President Donald Trump mark the arrival on a large scale of a new era of warfare assisted by artificial intelligence. Captain Timothy Hawkins, a Central Command spokesperson, told me last night that the AI tools the U.S. military is using in Iran operations don't make targeting decisions and don't replace humans. But they do help "make smarter decisions faster." That's been the driving ambition of the U.S. military, which has spent years looking at how to develop and deploy AI to the battlefield [...].

Critics, such as Stop Killer Robots, a coalition of 270 human-rights groups, argue that AI-enabled decision-support systems reduce the separation between recommending and executing a strike to a "dangerously thin" line. Hawkins said the military's use of AI assistance follows a rigorous process aligned with U.S. policy, military doctrine and the law. Artificial intelligence helps analysts whittle down what they need to focus on, generating so-called points of interest and helping personnel make "smart" decisions in the Iran operations, he told me. AI is also helping to pull data within systems and organize information to provide clarity.

Among the AI tech used in the Iran campaign is Maven Smart System, a digital mission control platform produced by Palantir [...]. That emerged from Project Maven, a project started in 2017 by the Pentagon to develop AI for the battlefield. Among the large language models installed on the system is Anthropic's Claude AI tool, according to the people, who said it has become central to U.S. operations against Iran and to accelerating Maven's development. Claude is also at the center of a row that pits Anthropic against the Department of Defense over limits on the software. Further reading: Hacked Tehran Traffic Cameras Fed Israeli Intelligence Before Strike On Khamenei
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Iran War Provides a Large-Scale Test For AI-Assisted Warfare More

Iran War Provides a Large-Scale Test For AI-Assisted Warfare

Comments Filter:

  • I think it depends (Score:4, Interesting)

    by liqu1d ( 4349325 ) on Friday March 06, 2026 @03:15PM (#66026650)
    There's many different types of AI not all are fallible. If they're asking chatgpt who to kill next then it's a huge issue. I would hope they're not but I also wouldn't be that surprised.

    • asking chatgpt who to kill next

      Color me dubious on that one. But how about using a deep net to recognize what kind of aircraft has a given radar signature? It's not "decision-making" as people think of it, but it really kinda is - and could raise the probability of an aircraft being deemed a target or not and ultimately shot at.

      • Re: I think it depends (Score:4, Insightful)

        by liqu1d ( 4349325 ) on Friday March 06, 2026 @04:08PM (#66026778)
        That sort of AI makes perfect sense and has probably been in use long before LLMs came about.

        • We work with Palantir in the office. Palantir is also part of the USA MIC so it definitely has these things available to military. We deployed a machine learning algorithm of theirs to predict maintenance requirements of machines based on past documented performance and previous documented failures, and it was hugely successful. This system went live in 2011 (15 years ago).

          Yes I guarantee you the military has been using this sort of AI already. Trained models are not new.

          • O so if one wheel bearing failed it would recommend to replace another within a certain time period sort of thing? If so that's a brilliant idea for AI. Especially that sort of kit you don't want it breaking down in the field.
      • They've been image recognition for a while to find things in the vast amount of image data that comes in from satellites. When convenient, that can be called AI.

  • let's play global thermonuclear war

  • Well, I guess they won't be able to use Project Maven anymore, since it has Anthropic Claude on it. Sure does suck when your petty retaliation costs you your ability to use a tool you consider so valuable. Bullet, meet foot.

  • slashdot troll killbot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday March 06, 2026 @03:43PM (#66026714)

    Can't wait for my visit from the Slashdot Troll Killbot.

  • Yeah, whatever (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Friday March 06, 2026 @05:31PM (#66026946) Homepage

    The US clearly has overwhelming strength compared to Iran. And woo-woo high-tech! But, the USA is going to lose this war.

    Why? Because the US has no clearly-defined goals. All the regime needs to do is survive, which it will: In the entire history of warfare, there has never been a regime change brought about by airstrikes alone. That will be a win for the regime and a loss for the USA. And it's always the loser who decides when a war is over, so if the USA makes that decision... it's the loser.

    Israel is probably the only country that will benefit from this; it will have a couple of greatly weakened adversaries in Hezbollah and Iran.

    • Re:Yeah, whatever (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday March 06, 2026 @08:09PM (#66027190) Journal

      Because the US has no clearly-defined goals.

      The goal is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The secondary objective is to prevent them from rebuilding their rocket supply. The third objective is to remove their support for terrorist proxies around the region.

      The bonus objective is regime change.

      • Those are not goals. They are sideshows from the Epstein Files. Also, your facts about nuclear threats are made up by some criminal named Netanyahu.

        • Also, your facts about nuclear threats are made up by some criminal named Netanyahu.

          I didn't say anything about nuclear threats. Learn to read.

          As for the Iran war, it is concerning that a single country is willing to unilaterally attack others.

        • Oh right, this is why they had built enrichment facilities far underground in hidden regions, because that’s what totally peaceful nations do for totally peaceful reasons. Idiot.

        • Aside from the GENUINE announcements by Iran's leaders about their
          - goals for nuclear weapons
          - willingness to use nukes when they have them
          - impending development of nuclear weapons
          ?

          Yeah, sure, I guess this is entirely made up.
          If Trump was using this to distract from Epstein, why did the US bomb iran some weeks ago, and then essentially shift forces OUT of the region to other theaters? Why not stay on-subject with Iran then?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        Remember, Trump said that the USA "obliterated" Iran's nuclear capability back in June 2025.

        If every single rocket is destroyed, and every single rocket factory too, Iran will be back building more rockets within 12 months of the end of the war. It's a country of 90 million people. It has the resources to rebuild.

        Removing support for terrorist proxies is a good goal. But again, it will merely introduce a pause, not a halt.

        Regime change is not a bonus objective. It is the only objective that will allo

        • Trump's real reason is personal. He wanted to get Khamanei because Khamanei tried to get him.

          The matrix has a glitch.

          Bush: "After all this is the guy who tried to kill my dad"
          Trump: "I got him before he got me"

          It is infeasible to say what Trump's "real reason" was. People can only guess. Trump is a pathological liar and his statements are for the most part meaningless and profoundly lack self-consistency.

          Regime change is not a bonus objective. It is the only objective that will allow the other three to be achieved. And since regime change will fail, all of the objectives will fail.

          There is no guarantee of anything. The vast majority of Iranians favors a change to democracy.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dskoll ( 99328 )

            Of course, Iranians want democracy. I have many Iranian friends and I understand their desire to overthrow the yoke of the Islamic Republic dictatorship that has made their lives miserable for 47 years.

            But the regime is too resilient to fall to a few assassinations or even airstrikes. Unless the USA is willing to invade Iran with boots on the ground, this regime will survive. And therefore, none of the stated objectives will be met.

            And if the USA expects Iranians to rise up against the government, th

      • The goal is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

        Reich wingers have been trying to sell this story for decades. You think you're the one who's going to manage it?

        • I don't have to sell anything, it's not my goal.

          If you believe that Iran was not actually trying to get nuclear weapons, then Trump picked a good objective. Easy to achieve an objective that's already been accomplished.

          • It certainly worked to get us into war the last time, but this time nobody else believed it.

            • If I remember right, under Bush the argument went like this:

              1) "Iraq is supporting terrorists!" Nobody believed it.
              2) "Iraq is trying to build nuclear weapons!" Almost nobody believed it. There were some aluminum tubes transferred.
              3) "Iraq is trying to get weapons of mass destruction!" Almost no one believed it.
              4) "The president has secret information that he can't tell us!" 60% of the population (especially congress) believed it, because 9/11.

              In the end it turned out that the Soviets prevented Ameri

    • If we are to infer their goals by the effects of their actions, genocidal intent is not incongruent. That they bombed the school immediately during the first wave of attacks seems to be designed to send a message.

      Israel is obviously a huge motivator and beneficiary of the war. We didn't need Secretary of State Marco Rubio to tell us that, but he did, and was very quickly shut up by his daddy in the white house.

      There need not be any other goal for these people besides killing Muslims. It doesn't stop at the

  • Didn't Trump tell everybody in this government to stop using it? Didn't the pentagon blacklist Anthropic?

  • Where is the Board of Peace when you need it?

  • really disappointed this juicy story had not funny.

  • My objection to these decision systems is that they frequently use the wrong objective function. Does the patient have cancer or not? Maximizing the probability of a correct answer is the wrong objective function. If a the patient is told they have cancer and they do not, there is a cost involved, a more expensive, invasive test. If the patient is told they do not have cancer and they do, the patients life has been put at risk, a much higher cost. Is that a car full of terrorists or a wedding party? Decide

Slashdot Top Deals

One has to look out for engineers -- they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb. -- Marcel Pagnol

Close