By – Rianne Michael
Abstract
This articles examines the role of AI in current conflicts, with an emphasis on the 2026 Iran War, which has been regarded as the “First AI War”. The paper analyses the Maven Smart System that was developed by Palantir, exploring how AI handles the traditional kill chain, provides information within seconds that once took days and has significantly reshaped who holds military power. While the system promises to create efficiency and precision, there is a simultaneous need to examine various legal and ethical questions surrounding civilian protection and proportionality. This article draws on principles of International Humanitarian Law, arguing that the rapid militarisation of AI demands human oversight, as essential to leading to transparent decision-making frameworks, and a reassessment of how AI fits into the existing legal structures to ensure that technological advancement does not outpace moral and legal responsibility.
Introduction
The wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran are laboratories of a new kind of warfare, not merely a humanitarian crisis. Across these conflicts, artificial intelligence (AI) has started reshaping how targets are identified, how quickly decisions to destruct are made and who holds more power over life and death. Advanced involvement of AI in warfare raises numerous questions related to military power and its compliance with international humanitarian law, arms control and future operational environments. The 2026 Iran war is most frequently referred to as “The First AI War”. It is because it serves as one of the first field tests of an AI-integrated military machine. United States has advanced its “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” doctrine in its war with Iran and is simultaneously conducting tests of its AI-focused military ecosystem that will change warfare forever. As of 9th April 2026, more than 13,000 targets have been struck under Operation Epic Fury, out of which thousands were hit on the opening day alone. These strikes emerge through a system that is designed to compress targeting decisions that once took days into seconds, which raises questions of speed, accountability and the cost of civilian life. This is an important point of discussion as it brings up numerous questions, as these wars are not just humanitarian crises but also pivotal moments in determining how future wars will be fought, who will hold more technological dominance and whether the existing legal frameworks around international humanitarian law can keep pace with the rapid militarisation of AI.
Role of Maven Smart System leading to evolution of warfare
At the center of the United States’ military strategy during the Iran war lies the Maven ,Smart System (MSS). It is a platform that was developed by the software company Palantir, which was under a Pentagon initiative that uses computer vision algorithms to analyses radar, videos and satellite imagery for the purpose of target identification. It has a unified mission control platform that gives commanders a live synchronized view of the battlefield and the machine learning model analysis of the incoming data, classifies objects and assigns coincidence scores to potential detections. Once the machine formally identifies a target, the system moves through a targeting pipeline that recommends striking options, suggested weaponry and ranked courses of action. This is reviewed by a human officer and then it is either authorized or forwarded for further approval. This system was previously tested in the frontlines of the Russia-Ukraine war and was the war was treated as a live experiment.
The Maven Smart system functions of to compress the ‘kill chain’ which is a military framework that describes the sequence of an attack from aspects of identifying a threat to acting on it. It mainly serves as a decision making model ensuring that military forces can act on targets rapidly and efficiently. This process is compressed in order to increase first-strike effectiveness, achieve decision superiority and maximize lethality, which has been a key goal of the US military and is now easily achievable through this AI model of warfare. Craig Jones, the kill chain expert, believes that the Maven Smart System has achieved compression to such a level that it is now much quicker than the speed of thought as operations are executed rapidly and simultaneously.
Need for AI in warfare as seen through the 2026 Iran War
The Maven Smart System has significantly changed how warfare operates, making it more instant and smoother. It was a response to a perplexing problem as the Pentagon in 2010s was drowning with surveillance data taken from drone footage and mobile phones. It did not have an efficient way to process this information for targeting. Officers used to log targets into excel sheets and use power point for data visualization and inserted numerous write-ups into Word documents that were sent to commanders to act. The military’s execution was significantly slow, and they needed a tool that could reach more targets from detection to execution more quickly. The Claude system was added into MSS that fused intelligence from multiple sources into a single operational interface. The whole process was changed into “four clicks” through the usage of AI.
While the MSS is one of the major AI systems being used during the war, there are many more. The Pentagon is quickly incorporating maritime drones such as Unmanned Underwater Vessels and is moving forward with its Drone Dominance Program which will field three-hundred thousand small law cost attack drones that will expand the US drone industrial base which costs little as 2000 dollars per unit, making them substantially inexpensive.
This clearly depicts that the future of warfare will depend on which side can establish to be more superior through a network of machines that work together and adapt to the battlefield conditions faster than any human manager could. This does not end human involvement during war as machines are not self-sufficient. While AI automation changes frontline capabilities and have become essential to warfare, there are numerous problems that come up as AI changing warfare in terms of what if machines malfunction and who is held accountable.
Some experts argue that AI could help reduce unintended casualties in war. However, it may also act with ruthless precision or use faulty data to injure innocent civilians. There is always a huge risk of over-reliance on technology, as pointed out by Treston Wheat as historical examples that prioritize technology show us that AI will enhance battlefield lethality and become a huge risk as destroying lives become easier.
Role of International Humanitarian Law
As AI is revolutionizing how warfare is conducted with precision and lethality, there is a lack of oversight in decision-making that tends to raise ethical and legal concerns due to the nature of warfare and the adequacy of existing legal frameworks. The core principles of International Humanitarian Law are distinction, proportionality, precaution and necessity of actions which are significantly important to keep in mind in an AI-enabled warfare. Firstly, while AI has enhanced capabilities in terms of accuracy, it can become a risky business if there is misidentification of a target which could lead to direct attack on civilians and civilian objects. Secondly, AI systems which assess a vast amount of data to estimate balance between military necessities and potential harm to civilians’ complicate decision-making within warfare and undermine accountability as there is a lack of human judgement into the data and the AI may not be able to make real-time proportionality assessments. Lastly, the use of AI must be carefully balanced with International Humanitarian law to make sure there is lawful conduct during warfare as many times there is a lack of transparency in military decision making when AI is involved. To maintain lawful conduct, it is essential that human oversight is not reduced but is present to oversee ethical concerns and reduce humanitarian risks.
Conclusion
The Iran war of 2026 has showed the international forum that AI has permanently transformed how wars are fought. Systems like the Maven Smart System have made targeting faster, strikes more precise and military operations more efficient. However, speed cannot come at the cost of accountability. As AI continues to compress human decision-making in warfare, the risk to civilian life grows alongside it. International Humanitarian Law was built for a world where humans bore the weight of lethal decisions that framework must now urgently evolve to ensure that as machines grow more powerful, human responsibility does not disappear entirely
About the Author
Rianne Michael is currently doing her BA LLB at Jindal Global Law School. Her interests lie at the intersection of caste discrimination law and criminal justice particularly how systems respond to caste-motivated violence and how procedural frameworks can either reinforce or dismantle social inequality.
Image Source: https://redanalysis.org/2025/06/30/israel-iran-war-ai/