AI Overreliance and Stale Data Blamed for Deadly U.S. Strike on Iranian School
An internal Pentagon probe blames faulty intelligence, outdated satellite imagery and overreliance on AI for a U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 160 people.
A U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 160 people, most of them pupils, has been attributed to faulty intelligence, outdated satellite imagery and an excessive reliance on artificial intelligence, according to an internal Pentagon investigation.
Two Tomahawk missiles hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the city of Minab on February 28, the day the United States and Israel began large-scale military operations against Iran.
The internal review identified a chain of avoidable mistakes. Although the site had been designated a military facility years earlier, commercial satellite imagery had long shown that its use had changed. Images from 2018 depicted brightly coloured walls and a soccer pitch. U.S. intelligence analysts noted these changes as early as 2019 and logged the information in a system that was not linked to the main military intelligence database.
Within U.S. Central Command, which led the operation, some personnel leaned heavily on the Maven Smart System, an AI-enabled military platform developed by Palantir Technologies. Officials said some staff had expected the system to flag outdated information or inconsistencies in the underlying intelligence on potential targets. A Palantir spokesperson said the company is not responsible for the underlying data or for identifying intelligence deficiencies.
In late February, the U.S. government ordered the large-scale airstrike. More than 1,000 Iranian targets were struck in the first 24 hours alone. Officials said the order compressed the time available to finalise targets, and that the resulting urgency, combined with information gaps, cuts to civilian protection personnel and overreliance on AI, led to the fatal error.
Officials involved in the investigation said some Pentagon personnel were aware within hours of the attack that the United States was responsible, yet Washington has not publicly acknowledged responsibility. A comprehensive investigation report was largely completed several months ago but remains unreleased, with its details kept confidential. A Pentagon spokesperson said the incident is still under investigation and declined to comment further.