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THE UNITED STATES has confirmed that it is using artificial intelligence in its bombardment of Iran.
However, it is not the first time that artificial intelligence has been mentioned in warfare, with reports suggesting previously that Israel had used the technology during its strikes in Gaza.
But this is on a different scale with hundreds of targets in daily lists.
Behind the scenes AI has taken over the job of thousands of analysts and planners – there has been widespread reporting that it has revolutionised intelligence collation particularly. It is used to shorten the time it takes to analyse and then identify targets for military action.
Speak to military and policy sources about it and they become nervous. It is not just the defence heavyweights of the US, China, Israel and Russia using it, it is almost all militaries across the globe – despotic and democratic alike.
It is not just being used for the kinetic action of combat, sources have said globally that it is utilised to examine surveillance data, sort through intercepted communications (known as sigint), trawl satellite imagery and even the management of human resources and logistics from the platoon to the division.
While specifics are hard to come by – one use suggested by a source is in specific target generation – either by searching through CCTV images or even phone calls.
The use could be to pump recorded sigint into the AI machine. The software will have some understanding of a target’s voice and this will then be able to identify the mobile phone they are using to communicate.
That AI then be used further to pinpoint their location. Another source said that wifi connections in buildings could be used to target specific people by locating the unique characteristics of their mobile phone.
Another use could be in identifying mobile rocket launch vehicles – a satellite will cover a large area and take an image. The image is then fed into the AI with a prompt to find everything that appears as a rocket launch vehicle, generating a target list.
Without this AI it is a room full of analysts trawling through that same image. Another use of similar AI technology is to find cancerous cells quicker for medics.
The trouble starts when the rocket launchers are inside disguised articulated trucks, making the AI’s job more difficult, but that is where the verification of humans comes into play.
Where the issues may take a lethal turn is when the human chain has been completely removed for, as the US Defence Secretary called, “stupid rules of engagement”.
In October, CNN reported that the US military’s critical checks and balance, its legal officers, were being sidelined by Hegseth.
On the first night of the war on Iran, US bombers as well as submarine and ship launched tomahawk cruise missiles struck approximately 1,000 targets. A job so vast that it has been widely reported that AI was key to determine the strike packages as they are known.
When asked at a press conference if the US was using AI or autonomous AI controlled vehicles for the prosecution of Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth stumbled over a confirmation.
“Uh, we’ve got a lot of autonomous systems or systems that are – that – drones and others, uh, incorporated with smart AI aspects to them, but a lot of which I can’t talk about here,” he said.
Ireland has not ignored the tech. It is understood the Irish Defence Forces is using AI, particularly in intelligence work but the specifics are so secretive it is hard to confirm past informed speculation and gossip.
NATO member states are understood to be using it to manage the monitoring of Shadow Fleet ships moving sanctioned oil.
In Europe, sources have said, the French company CLS or Celestica, is one of the world leaders in developing AI on this side of the Atlantic for military use. Again, there is huge secrecy but sources in Europe have said the costs are vast and the money being made by private companies is huge.
That private/public partnership model saw the US and its so-called tech bros from Silicon Valley answering a callout from the American government to come up with solutions.
A fascinating 2024 report by Georgetown University showed that the US Army’s 18th Airborne used an AI product by Palantir to come up with greater military efficiencies. It reduced a team of 2,000 to just 20 following the use of a system called Project Maven.
It was all going well it seemed and led to Anthropic giving the US military access to its AI tools – such as Claude. They began marrying multiple tools together – Claude and Project Maven.
But then the tech bros and their engineers discovered that their kit was used for the incursion into Venezuela – something which prompted searching questions among the Silicon Valley industry heads.
What followed was Anthropic trying to put limits on what purposes in which the AI could be used for. The New York Times has reported that this was because engineers, who are paid in the millions, became queasy and the company wanted to prevent them leaving.
Regardless, the Trump regime, after a meeting between Anthropic and Hegseth, decided to declare the AI firm a “supply chain risk” – essentially blacklisting it from other procurement.
Whatever about this spat, what’s clear is that the military AI juggernaut is rolling and like a detonating grenade, it is impossible to stop the explosion expanding.
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