The U.S. military struck over 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of its campaign against Iran - a pace made possible by the most advanced artificial intelligence ever used in American warfare. The Pentagon's Maven Smart System, built by Palantir and powered by Anthropic's Claude, generated target suggestions, issued precise location coordinates, and ranked them by strategic importance, as reported by "Hvylya", citing The Washington Post.
The system draws on an enormous volume of classified data from satellites, surveillance, and other intelligence sources to provide real-time targeting and prioritization. One source described the effect bluntly: the pairing of Maven and Claude has turned "weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations," reducing Iran's ability to counterstrike. The AI tools also evaluate strikes after they are initiated.
Paul Scharre, executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, highlighted the fundamental change at work. "The key paradigm shift is that AI enables the U.S. military to develop targeting packages at machine speed rather than human speed," he said. He added that the speed of deployment in Iran was "quite remarkable - to see this in the middle of an operation."
The Israel Defense Forces collaborated closely with the U.S. on target selection. In a statement, the IDF said it had worked with the American military "for thousands of hours to build as valuable and extensive a target bank as possible." It was not immediately clear whether Maven's target lists were shared directly with the Israelis prior to the attack.
Ben Van Roo, CEO of defense software startup Legion Intelligence, noted that generative AI's typical role in military software has been "chat and advanced search functions - essentially summarizing information." He said the Iran campaign may represent something far more ambitious, raising questions about how it built on existing targeting software.
Also read: "Nuclear 9/11": Friedman Reveals the Real Fear Driving America's Strike on Iran