Comment: Iran war shows how AI speeds up military 鈥榢ill chains鈥� Published on: 17 March 2026 Writing for The Conversation, Craig Jones and Helen M. Kinsella discuss how the use of AI in the Iran war is the latest development to have shortened the military 鈥渒ill chain鈥�. , and , The US-Israel war on Iran has been described as 鈥渢he first AI war鈥�. But recent deployments of artificial intelligence are, in fact, the latest in a long history of technological developments that prize a need for speed in the military 鈥渒ill chain鈥�. 鈥淪ixty seconds 鈥� that鈥檚 all it took,鈥� a former Israeli Mossad agent of the strikes that killed 鈥檚 supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28 2026, the first day of the US-Israel war on Iran. The speed and scale of war have been significantly enhanced by . But this brings serious risks for civilians and military combatants alike. Modern military operations produce and rely on an enormous amount of intelligence. This includes intercepted phone calls and text messages, the mass surveillance of the internet (known as 鈥渟ignals intelligence鈥�), as well as satellite imagery and video feeds from loitering drones. We can think of all this intelligence as data 鈥� and the problem is, there鈥檚 too much of it. As early as 2010, the was concerned about 鈥渟wimming in sensors and drowning in data鈥�. Too many hours of footage, and too many analysts manually reviewing this intelligence. AI systems can dramatically speed up the analysis of military intelligence. Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command (CentCom), recently confirmed the use of AI tools in the war against Iran, : These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds, so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react 鈥� Advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds. In 2024, found that the US Army鈥檚 18th Airborne Corps had employed AI to assist with intelligence processing 鈥� reducing a team of 2,000 to just 20. The allure of speed In the second world war, the aerial targeting cycle 鈥� from collecting images to assembling target packages complete with intelligence reports 鈥� could take weeks or . But over the ensuing decades, the US military set about what it called 鈥� shortening the time between the identification of a target and use of force against it. During the first Gulf war of 1991, Iraq鈥檚 president Saddam Hussein made use of mobile missile launchers that would roam the desert firing Scud missiles. By the time US radar identified its location, the launcher could be miles away. This 鈥渟hoot and scoot鈥� tactic required new technology to track these mobile targets. Mobile Scud missile launchers proved a new challenge for the US military during the first Gulf war. A key breakthrough came shortly after the September 11 attacks in the form of an . In November 2002, the CIA Al Qaeda鈥檚 leader in Yemen, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harithi. This heralded a new era of warfare in which piloted from military bases in the US flew remotely over the skies of Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The drones鈥� powerful cameras could take high-resolution video and beam it back to the US via satellite in a matter of seconds, enabling the drone operators to track mobile targets. The same drone which had eyes on the target could fire missiles to kill or destroy the target. With greater speed comes greater risk Two decades ago, it was easy to dismiss as hyperbole the idea that the coming age of cyberwarfare might bring about 鈥渂ombing at the speed of thought鈥�, a phrase coined by in 2003. Yet with the advent of AI warfare, the unthinkable has become almost antiquated. Part of the push to employ AI tools is the sense that human thought is no match for the processing speeds enabled by AI systems. The US Department of Defense鈥檚 states: 鈥淢ilitary AI is going to be a race for the foreseeable future, and therefore speed wins 鈥� We must accept that the risks of not moving fast enough outweigh the risks of imperfect alignment.鈥� While the precise uses of AI by US and other military is shrouded in secrecy, information has been made public that highlights the risks of its use on civilian populations. In Gaza, according to Israeli intelligence sources, the AI systems and have been programmed to accept up to 100 civilian casualties (and occasionally even more) for a strike on a single suspected Hamas combatant. are estimated to have been killed there since October 7 2023. In February 2024, a US airstrike killed a 20-year-old student, Abdul-Rahman al-Rawi. At the time, a senior US official admitted the strikes 鈥� although confusingly, the US military now says it has 鈥渘o way of knowing鈥� whether it used AI in specific airstrikes. The risk is that AI could lower the threshold or cost of going to war, as people play an increasingly in reviewing and rubber-stamping the . The embedding of AI into military kill chains intersects with other alarming developments. After years of inaction, the US military spent more than a decade developing an in war, but it has been almost totally dismantled under the Trump administration. The to the military on targeting operations, including compliance with international law and rules of engagement, have been and . Meanwhile, since the start of the war in Iran, more than 1,200 civilians have been killed, to the Iranian Health Ministry. On February 28, the US military struck an in the south of Iran, killing at least 175 people, most of them children. The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has been clear that is for 鈥渕aximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct鈥�. With such an attitude, and by privileging speed over deliberation, civilian casualties become inevitable, and accountability ever more elusive. , Senior Lecturer in Political Geography, Department of Geography, and , Professor of Political Science and Law, Department of Political Science, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . 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