US military faces near miss due to AI-based false intelligence report

The US military’s experiment with AI-powered intelligence is producing results that look less like a technological breakthrough and more like a cautionary tale. A Tomahawk missile strike on February 28, 2026, killed an estimated 150 to 175 civilians at a school in Minab, Iran, after outdated intelligence was fed through AI-assisted targeting systems without adequate human vetting. What went wrong in Minab The strike relied on stale data that had not been properly validated before the launch order was given. Subsequent investigations found that the errors were primarily attributable to human decision-making, not AI hallucination in the technical sense. Operators chose to disregard database warnings and proceeded with information that no longer reflected conditions on the ground. US Central Command has been at the center of the military’s AI adoption push. CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper acknowledged in mid-2026 that AI tools are being used for rapid data processing across operations, while maintaining that human decisions remain the ultimate authority. The scale of AI targeting Palantir’s Maven Smart System, one of the primary platforms integrated into CENTCOM operations, repo...