US Central Command overhauls AI targeting protocols after deadly school strike killed 156 in Iran

US Central Command has rewritten its playbook for how artificial intelligence is used to select and vet lethal targets in combat, a direct response to a February strike that killed approximately 156 people at an elementary school in Iran, including 120 children. The Minab school strike on February 28 was the single deadliest civilian incident during Operation Epic Fury, the US military campaign against Iran. Seven months later, CENTCOM announced a series of changes designed to prevent the kind of intelligence failures that turned a school into a target. What changed and why The updates, reported on September 22, center on three areas: how targets get vetted before a strike is authorized, how civilian presence near potential targets is tracked in real time, and how the underlying AI systems process and refresh their data. At the core of the overhaul sits Palantir Technologies’ Maven Smart System, the AI platform the Pentagon has increasingly relied on to accelerate the targeting cycle. The system received what CENTCOM described as extensive upgrades, including new capabilities to accurately classify building functions. CENTCOM also deployed AI agents tasked with continuously re-eval...