A rendering of what someone using the new Project Overmatch capability known as Maven would look like. A unified tactical display that provides insight on vessels across the world, the Maven program overlays real-time ship readiness and sustainment data right at the user’s fingertips by utilizing artificial intelligence. It was created by Project Overmatch and Palantir in collaboration as the first of many projects that integrate commercial tech at commercial speeds for government use to ensure interoperability.
Credit: Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR)
March 25, 2026
Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA)
By Meghna Pradhan
The eruption of high-intensity hostilities in the Persian Gulf in late February and early March 2026, initiated jointly by the US and Israel and dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’ or ‘Operation Roaring Lion’ by respective nations, represents a watershed moment in the history of armed conflict. Aimed at conducting ‘decapitation strikes’[1] on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, command-and-control centres and senior leadership, the conflict has seen a rapid escalation in kinetic and cyber domains. More importantly, the event served as kindling for what is being called the first full-scale ‘AI war’.[2]
The designation is not purely rhetorical. There has been unprecedented use of AI-driven assets as Decision Support Systems (DSS), not merely as secondary analytical tools but as active enablers of kill chains. Typically, the process of gathering intelligence, identifying targets, conducting simulations and damage assessments, performing predictive analyses, assigning weapons, and executing missions took weeks, if not months, of human deliberation. However, the current war has seen attacks executed faster than ‘the speed of thought’, exemplified by the US conducting almost 900 strikes on Iranian targets in the first 12 hours alone and over 5,500 strikes in the first 10 days.[3]
To achieve such unprecedented scale, precision and velocity in attacks, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) leveraged advanced AI tools, such as Palantir’s MAVEN Smart System (MSS), which was integrated with Anthropic’s Claude LLM. These assets were using troves of unstructured, classified data from satellites, surveillance and other intelligence, helping to provide pattern development, real-time targeting and target prioritisation.[4] For instance, the precision strikes that led to assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei[5] and marked beginning of the war, was done by methodical use of AI and cyber espionage—the cameras in Tehran were hacked over the years, recording and feeding massive amounts of presumably mundane data (parking, personnel, traffic light timings, etc.) to Israel. This data, in turn, was used to map patterns and layouts, and ultimately to run predictive analyses for simultaneous and precise strikes.
The US has also developed and deployed Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a ‘Kamikaze’ drone system, as a cost-efficient high-volume defence asset against Iran. At a production cost of US$ 35,000, these drones offer a lower-cost alternative compared to US Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, which cost upward of US$ 2.4 million per shot.[6] Interestingly, LUCAS drones were reverse-engineered from Iran’s HESA Shahed-136 drones, which have gained notoriety in the Ukraine–Russia war. These drones are equipped with artificial intelligence that enables them to perform autonomous and swarm manoeuvres. The integration of LUCAS marks significant departures from the conventional understanding of asymmetric warfare. One, there is a realisation in the US that sophistication is not the only benchmark of military capability, and that cost and mass can be decisive factors. Secondly, the earlier logic of the flow of technology from more advanced to less advanced states no longer necessarily hold.[7]
Iran has similarly leveraged drone saturation and cyber warfare against the US and Israel. Iranian drone strikes have allegedly been responsible for the deaths of six US military personnel in Kuwait.[8] These attacks are also being used for targeting data infrastructures; of the six data facilities that the US company Amazon has in the UAE, three were allegedly struck by Iranian drones.[9] Iranian hacker group Handala has also reportedly targeted US and Israel-based entities, including Israel’s Air Force personnel, Israel Meteorological Systems, US-based medical technology firm Stryker and Hebrew University.[10] There are indications that the diminished timeline for their scale of attacks may be due to AI-assisted reconnaissance.[11] Furthermore, allegations have emerged that Iran has been actively leveraging AI for disinformation campaigns in the media.[12] Notably, Iran is currently facing an internet blackout, indicating that these cyberattacks are occurring through proxies distributed outside the country, indicating a significant degree of diffusion in its asymmetric cyber and autonomous capabilities.
The advantages of AI and drones, such as decision compression and low-cost saturation, have also proven to come with high human costs. The hyper-condensed decision-making cycle leaves little room for the human operator to cross-verify. Reliance on AI-accelerated decision-making, which is often plagued by outdated data and a lack of rigorous human verification, has direct implications for human casualties. The March 2026 war has illustrated these costs, as drone attacks from both sides of the war have hit civilian infrastructure and population directly, or have caused damage due to ensuing debris, shrapnel and fires.
For instance, on 28 February 2026, a Tomahawk cruise missile reportedly hit near Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Primary School in Minab, causing over 170 casualties, mostly consisting of children under the age of 12.[13] The school was located near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility. It was likely not recognised by AI-driven target identification systems as a separate building because of outdated intel dating back to 2016.[14] Similarly, in a bid against military infrastructure in Tehran, a residential complex in Resalat Square, Tehran, had also become a site for airstrikes, leading to over 40 civilian casualties.[15]
Multiple reports suggest that the US and Israeli warheads have been hitting civilian sites such as schools, hospitals,[16] as well as protected structures and historic landmarks such as Golestan Palace in Tehran, and Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan. Iran has, in retaliation, initiated strikes in the UAE, leading to fires near the US Consulate in Dubai and impacting civilian areas like Burj Al Arab, Dubai Airport and Jebel Ali seaport.[17] In Israel, Iranian drone-based retaliation has reportedly caused over 18 deaths and 3,100 injuries among civilian and military personnel alike.[18]
These caveats have also extended to the battlefield. For instance, the increased use of drone swarming tactics may overwhelm airspace and overload signature interception for defence systems. The downing of three US F-15E Strike Eagles in friendly fire by Kuwaiti F/A-18 on 1 March 2026, exemplifies this perfectly. As an active target of Iran’s missile and drone attacks, Kuwait’s air defence was primed to attack. It mistakenly targeted US fighter jets during a high-tension, active combat situation.[19]
These incidents have therefore underscored an important aspect of AI-driven warfare: while AI may guarantee decision compression, it does not necessarily prevent catastrophic human costs. The technology continues to develop and remains vulnerable to ‘algorithmic brittleness’,[20] thereby frequently leading to violations of International Humanitarian Law. The very foundational promise of AI in warfare, of reduction in collateral damages due to precision, elimination of human error, and making combat operations safer for civilians and military personnel alike, seems to have remained considerably unfulfilled.
Additionally, the unprecedented speed and scale afforded by AI seem to have accelerated speed for resultant casualties; deaths that might have previously occurred over the course of a month can now happen in a matter of hours or days. Taken together, it is clear that integrating highly sophisticated tools and greater machine autonomy, without appropriate guardrails and meaningful human oversight, may likely worsen the overall human cost of war rather than reduce it.
Notably, several critical diplomatic initiatives were unfolding concurrently with the war in West Asia, grappling with these exact dilemmas. In February, weeks before the conflict broke out, global leaders had convened at A Coruña, Spain, for the Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM) Summit. Similarly, just a couple of days after Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion was initiated, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) held its Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) session on autonomous weapons in Geneva.
There is a stark sense of irony to the timing of these events: as diplomats debate the nuances of human–machine interaction, legal reviews and definitions of autonomy, major powers are actively leveraging these systems unchecked on the battlefield. Furthermore, even as the urgency to regulate military AI peaks, the number of signatures on instruments that actively advocate for responsible military AI has declined. The ‘Pathways to AI’, formulated after REAIM 2026 in Spain, received only 35 signatures out of the over 80 countries attending, with total abstention by major powers (including the primary countries engaged in the current conflict).[21] Dutch defence minister Ruben Brekelmans mentioned how governments face a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’, where they are caught between setting limits in military AI and avoiding restrictions that, amidst an escalating arms race, their rivals may ignore.[22]
The ‘first AI war’, therefore, has created a significant paradox: on one hand, the ongoing (and unchecked) expansion and use of military AI has severely undermined global diplomatic efforts. It calls into question the efficacy of processes that discuss theoretical constraints and debate semantics, which state actors may readily abandon in favour of overwhelming tactical advantages. On the other hand, the civilian casualties and socio-cultural losses wrought by the Iran war underscore the very necessity of these discussions and debates. Even as forums like UNCCW and REAIM struggle to keep pace with the integration of AI into military operations, forging consensus on robust guardrails that balance the expansion of autonomous capabilities with clear human accountability has become increasingly urgent.
The March 2026 conflict in West Asia, therefore, has fundamentally altered perceptions and calculations about modern warfare. As the proclaimed first full-scale ‘AI war’, it has served as a proving ground for artificial intelligence and autonomous systems in a military context. We are witnessing, in real time, the capabilities of algorithms to be a decisive factor in military engagement by accelerating military operations beyond the capabilities of human cognition. Yet, when seen in the context of the friendly fire incidents and civilian casualties, the delegation of decisions regarding military engagement and lethality to machines also comes with damning costs and critical accountability gaps.
There is thus a need to strike a balance between the necessity of AI and autonomous systems for decision speed and the need for guardrails to prevent human cost and uphold IHL. In the face of real-time geometric growth and proliferation in military AI, the international community faces a challenge of creating frameworks that ensure ethical and legal compliance and meaningful human control over these systems, before human oversight becomes obsolete.
About the author: Meghna Pradhan is a Research Analyst at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, New Delhi. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, with her thesis focused on how emerging technologies such as AI affect political processes. She holds an M.Phil. in Korean Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, an M.A. in East Asian Studies from the University of Delhi, and a B.Sc. in Economics from Symbiosis School of Economics.
Source: This article was published by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis
[1] Graham Scarbro, “Iran-Israel Conflict: A Quicklook Analysis of Operation Rising Lion”, US Naval Institute, June 2025.
[2] Larisa Brown, “The First AI War: US and Israel Use Iran to Test Autonomous Tech”, The Times, 10 March 2026.
[3] “US Says 5,500 Targets Hit in Iran as Operation Continues”, Middle East Monitor, 11 March 2026.
[4] Tara Copp, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Duncan, “Anthropic’s AI Tool Claude Central to U.S. Campaign in Iran, Amid a Bitter Feud”, The Washington Post, 4 March 2026.
[5] Mehul Srivastava, James Shotter, Neri Zilber and Steff Chávez, “Inside the Plan to Kill Ali Khamenei”, Financial Times, 2 March 2026.
[6] Zita Ballinger Fletcher, “America Reverse-Engineered Iran’s Most Decisive Weapon—Then Launched It Against Its Creators”, Popular Mechanics, 13 March 2026.
[7] Steve Feldstein and Dara Massicot, “What We Know About Drone Use in the Iran War”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2 March 2026.
[8] Abené Clayton, “Pentagon Releases Names of Final Two Soldiers of Six Killed in Kuwait”, The Guardian, 5 March 2026.
[9] Julian Fell, Ashley Kyd, Jarrod Fankhauser and Matt Liddy, “AI is Helping Choose Targets in Iran War — Now It’s a Target Too”, ABC News, 15 March 2026.
[10] Andy Greenberg, Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman, “How ‘Handala’ Became the Face of Iran’s Hacker Counterattacks”, The Wired, 12 March 2026; Aakash Sharma and Khooshi Sonkar, “Pledged to Iran’s New Leader, Hackers Wage Digital War on US and Israel”, India Today, 16 March 2026.
[11] Ibrahim Saify, “AI, the Iran-US Conflict, and the Threat to US Critical Infrastructure”, CloudSEK, 6 March 2026.
[12] Kenrick Cai, “Trump Accuses Iran of Using AI to Spread Disinformation”, Reuters, 16 March 2026.
[13] Malachy Browne and John Ismay, “U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows”, The New York Times, 8 March 2026.
[14] Elizabeth Melimopoulos, “Who Bombed the Iranian Girls’ School, Killing More Than 170? What We Know”, Al Jazeera, 12 March 2026; “Al Jazeera Investigation: Iran Girls’ School Targeting Likely ‘Deliberate’”, Al Jazeera, 3 March 2026.
[15] Mahmoud Aslan, “Rescue Efforts in Tehran After a Triple Strike Hit Apartment Buildings, Killing 40”, Drop Site, 12 March 2026.
[16] Paul Brown, Shayan Sardarizadeh and Matt Murphy, “Iranian Schools, Hospital and Landmarks Among Civilian Sites Hit During US-Israeli Strikes”, BBC, 6 March 2026.
[17] “Iran Attacks Rock Dubai’s Palm, Burj Al Arab, Airport”, The Hindu, 2 March 2026.
[18] Moiz Mustafa, “Breaking Down the Israel–Iran Conflict: What We Know So Far – Day 16”, Daily Mirror, 16 March 2026.
[19] “US-made Kuwaiti Jet Mistakenly Shot Down Three US F-15s, Probe Finds: WSJ”, The Economic Times, 4 March 2026.
[20] This refers to a condition where an algorithm may not be able to generalise or adapt to conditions outside a narrow set of assumptions. In such a situation, while AI may perform well under certain conditions, especially during training, it may not perform optimally, or even fail, when exposed to new, unexpected, or slightly modified inputs.
[21] Oumaima Moho Amer, “Morocco Joins 34 Countries in Endorsing ‘Pathways to Action’ Pact Towards Safe Governance of Military AI”, Morocco World News, 6 February 2026.
[22] “AI Weapons Regulation: Nations Divided as US, China Skip Global Pledge”, ET Enterprise AI, 6 February 2026.
March 25, 2026
Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA)
By Meghna Pradhan
The eruption of high-intensity hostilities in the Persian Gulf in late February and early March 2026, initiated jointly by the US and Israel and dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’ or ‘Operation Roaring Lion’ by respective nations, represents a watershed moment in the history of armed conflict. Aimed at conducting ‘decapitation strikes’[1] on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, command-and-control centres and senior leadership, the conflict has seen a rapid escalation in kinetic and cyber domains. More importantly, the event served as kindling for what is being called the first full-scale ‘AI war’.[2]
The designation is not purely rhetorical. There has been unprecedented use of AI-driven assets as Decision Support Systems (DSS), not merely as secondary analytical tools but as active enablers of kill chains. Typically, the process of gathering intelligence, identifying targets, conducting simulations and damage assessments, performing predictive analyses, assigning weapons, and executing missions took weeks, if not months, of human deliberation. However, the current war has seen attacks executed faster than ‘the speed of thought’, exemplified by the US conducting almost 900 strikes on Iranian targets in the first 12 hours alone and over 5,500 strikes in the first 10 days.[3]
To achieve such unprecedented scale, precision and velocity in attacks, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) leveraged advanced AI tools, such as Palantir’s MAVEN Smart System (MSS), which was integrated with Anthropic’s Claude LLM. These assets were using troves of unstructured, classified data from satellites, surveillance and other intelligence, helping to provide pattern development, real-time targeting and target prioritisation.[4] For instance, the precision strikes that led to assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei[5] and marked beginning of the war, was done by methodical use of AI and cyber espionage—the cameras in Tehran were hacked over the years, recording and feeding massive amounts of presumably mundane data (parking, personnel, traffic light timings, etc.) to Israel. This data, in turn, was used to map patterns and layouts, and ultimately to run predictive analyses for simultaneous and precise strikes.
The US has also developed and deployed Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a ‘Kamikaze’ drone system, as a cost-efficient high-volume defence asset against Iran. At a production cost of US$ 35,000, these drones offer a lower-cost alternative compared to US Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, which cost upward of US$ 2.4 million per shot.[6] Interestingly, LUCAS drones were reverse-engineered from Iran’s HESA Shahed-136 drones, which have gained notoriety in the Ukraine–Russia war. These drones are equipped with artificial intelligence that enables them to perform autonomous and swarm manoeuvres. The integration of LUCAS marks significant departures from the conventional understanding of asymmetric warfare. One, there is a realisation in the US that sophistication is not the only benchmark of military capability, and that cost and mass can be decisive factors. Secondly, the earlier logic of the flow of technology from more advanced to less advanced states no longer necessarily hold.[7]
Iran has similarly leveraged drone saturation and cyber warfare against the US and Israel. Iranian drone strikes have allegedly been responsible for the deaths of six US military personnel in Kuwait.[8] These attacks are also being used for targeting data infrastructures; of the six data facilities that the US company Amazon has in the UAE, three were allegedly struck by Iranian drones.[9] Iranian hacker group Handala has also reportedly targeted US and Israel-based entities, including Israel’s Air Force personnel, Israel Meteorological Systems, US-based medical technology firm Stryker and Hebrew University.[10] There are indications that the diminished timeline for their scale of attacks may be due to AI-assisted reconnaissance.[11] Furthermore, allegations have emerged that Iran has been actively leveraging AI for disinformation campaigns in the media.[12] Notably, Iran is currently facing an internet blackout, indicating that these cyberattacks are occurring through proxies distributed outside the country, indicating a significant degree of diffusion in its asymmetric cyber and autonomous capabilities.
The advantages of AI and drones, such as decision compression and low-cost saturation, have also proven to come with high human costs. The hyper-condensed decision-making cycle leaves little room for the human operator to cross-verify. Reliance on AI-accelerated decision-making, which is often plagued by outdated data and a lack of rigorous human verification, has direct implications for human casualties. The March 2026 war has illustrated these costs, as drone attacks from both sides of the war have hit civilian infrastructure and population directly, or have caused damage due to ensuing debris, shrapnel and fires.
For instance, on 28 February 2026, a Tomahawk cruise missile reportedly hit near Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Primary School in Minab, causing over 170 casualties, mostly consisting of children under the age of 12.[13] The school was located near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility. It was likely not recognised by AI-driven target identification systems as a separate building because of outdated intel dating back to 2016.[14] Similarly, in a bid against military infrastructure in Tehran, a residential complex in Resalat Square, Tehran, had also become a site for airstrikes, leading to over 40 civilian casualties.[15]
Multiple reports suggest that the US and Israeli warheads have been hitting civilian sites such as schools, hospitals,[16] as well as protected structures and historic landmarks such as Golestan Palace in Tehran, and Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan. Iran has, in retaliation, initiated strikes in the UAE, leading to fires near the US Consulate in Dubai and impacting civilian areas like Burj Al Arab, Dubai Airport and Jebel Ali seaport.[17] In Israel, Iranian drone-based retaliation has reportedly caused over 18 deaths and 3,100 injuries among civilian and military personnel alike.[18]
These caveats have also extended to the battlefield. For instance, the increased use of drone swarming tactics may overwhelm airspace and overload signature interception for defence systems. The downing of three US F-15E Strike Eagles in friendly fire by Kuwaiti F/A-18 on 1 March 2026, exemplifies this perfectly. As an active target of Iran’s missile and drone attacks, Kuwait’s air defence was primed to attack. It mistakenly targeted US fighter jets during a high-tension, active combat situation.[19]
These incidents have therefore underscored an important aspect of AI-driven warfare: while AI may guarantee decision compression, it does not necessarily prevent catastrophic human costs. The technology continues to develop and remains vulnerable to ‘algorithmic brittleness’,[20] thereby frequently leading to violations of International Humanitarian Law. The very foundational promise of AI in warfare, of reduction in collateral damages due to precision, elimination of human error, and making combat operations safer for civilians and military personnel alike, seems to have remained considerably unfulfilled.
Additionally, the unprecedented speed and scale afforded by AI seem to have accelerated speed for resultant casualties; deaths that might have previously occurred over the course of a month can now happen in a matter of hours or days. Taken together, it is clear that integrating highly sophisticated tools and greater machine autonomy, without appropriate guardrails and meaningful human oversight, may likely worsen the overall human cost of war rather than reduce it.
Notably, several critical diplomatic initiatives were unfolding concurrently with the war in West Asia, grappling with these exact dilemmas. In February, weeks before the conflict broke out, global leaders had convened at A Coruña, Spain, for the Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM) Summit. Similarly, just a couple of days after Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion was initiated, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) held its Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) session on autonomous weapons in Geneva.
There is a stark sense of irony to the timing of these events: as diplomats debate the nuances of human–machine interaction, legal reviews and definitions of autonomy, major powers are actively leveraging these systems unchecked on the battlefield. Furthermore, even as the urgency to regulate military AI peaks, the number of signatures on instruments that actively advocate for responsible military AI has declined. The ‘Pathways to AI’, formulated after REAIM 2026 in Spain, received only 35 signatures out of the over 80 countries attending, with total abstention by major powers (including the primary countries engaged in the current conflict).[21] Dutch defence minister Ruben Brekelmans mentioned how governments face a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’, where they are caught between setting limits in military AI and avoiding restrictions that, amidst an escalating arms race, their rivals may ignore.[22]
The ‘first AI war’, therefore, has created a significant paradox: on one hand, the ongoing (and unchecked) expansion and use of military AI has severely undermined global diplomatic efforts. It calls into question the efficacy of processes that discuss theoretical constraints and debate semantics, which state actors may readily abandon in favour of overwhelming tactical advantages. On the other hand, the civilian casualties and socio-cultural losses wrought by the Iran war underscore the very necessity of these discussions and debates. Even as forums like UNCCW and REAIM struggle to keep pace with the integration of AI into military operations, forging consensus on robust guardrails that balance the expansion of autonomous capabilities with clear human accountability has become increasingly urgent.
The March 2026 conflict in West Asia, therefore, has fundamentally altered perceptions and calculations about modern warfare. As the proclaimed first full-scale ‘AI war’, it has served as a proving ground for artificial intelligence and autonomous systems in a military context. We are witnessing, in real time, the capabilities of algorithms to be a decisive factor in military engagement by accelerating military operations beyond the capabilities of human cognition. Yet, when seen in the context of the friendly fire incidents and civilian casualties, the delegation of decisions regarding military engagement and lethality to machines also comes with damning costs and critical accountability gaps.
There is thus a need to strike a balance between the necessity of AI and autonomous systems for decision speed and the need for guardrails to prevent human cost and uphold IHL. In the face of real-time geometric growth and proliferation in military AI, the international community faces a challenge of creating frameworks that ensure ethical and legal compliance and meaningful human control over these systems, before human oversight becomes obsolete.
About the author: Meghna Pradhan is a Research Analyst at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, New Delhi. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, with her thesis focused on how emerging technologies such as AI affect political processes. She holds an M.Phil. in Korean Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, an M.A. in East Asian Studies from the University of Delhi, and a B.Sc. in Economics from Symbiosis School of Economics.
Source: This article was published by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis
[1] Graham Scarbro, “Iran-Israel Conflict: A Quicklook Analysis of Operation Rising Lion”, US Naval Institute, June 2025.
[2] Larisa Brown, “The First AI War: US and Israel Use Iran to Test Autonomous Tech”, The Times, 10 March 2026.
[3] “US Says 5,500 Targets Hit in Iran as Operation Continues”, Middle East Monitor, 11 March 2026.
[4] Tara Copp, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Duncan, “Anthropic’s AI Tool Claude Central to U.S. Campaign in Iran, Amid a Bitter Feud”, The Washington Post, 4 March 2026.
[5] Mehul Srivastava, James Shotter, Neri Zilber and Steff Chávez, “Inside the Plan to Kill Ali Khamenei”, Financial Times, 2 March 2026.
[6] Zita Ballinger Fletcher, “America Reverse-Engineered Iran’s Most Decisive Weapon—Then Launched It Against Its Creators”, Popular Mechanics, 13 March 2026.
[7] Steve Feldstein and Dara Massicot, “What We Know About Drone Use in the Iran War”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2 March 2026.
[8] Abené Clayton, “Pentagon Releases Names of Final Two Soldiers of Six Killed in Kuwait”, The Guardian, 5 March 2026.
[9] Julian Fell, Ashley Kyd, Jarrod Fankhauser and Matt Liddy, “AI is Helping Choose Targets in Iran War — Now It’s a Target Too”, ABC News, 15 March 2026.
[10] Andy Greenberg, Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman, “How ‘Handala’ Became the Face of Iran’s Hacker Counterattacks”, The Wired, 12 March 2026; Aakash Sharma and Khooshi Sonkar, “Pledged to Iran’s New Leader, Hackers Wage Digital War on US and Israel”, India Today, 16 March 2026.
[11] Ibrahim Saify, “AI, the Iran-US Conflict, and the Threat to US Critical Infrastructure”, CloudSEK, 6 March 2026.
[12] Kenrick Cai, “Trump Accuses Iran of Using AI to Spread Disinformation”, Reuters, 16 March 2026.
[13] Malachy Browne and John Ismay, “U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows”, The New York Times, 8 March 2026.
[14] Elizabeth Melimopoulos, “Who Bombed the Iranian Girls’ School, Killing More Than 170? What We Know”, Al Jazeera, 12 March 2026; “Al Jazeera Investigation: Iran Girls’ School Targeting Likely ‘Deliberate’”, Al Jazeera, 3 March 2026.
[15] Mahmoud Aslan, “Rescue Efforts in Tehran After a Triple Strike Hit Apartment Buildings, Killing 40”, Drop Site, 12 March 2026.
[16] Paul Brown, Shayan Sardarizadeh and Matt Murphy, “Iranian Schools, Hospital and Landmarks Among Civilian Sites Hit During US-Israeli Strikes”, BBC, 6 March 2026.
[17] “Iran Attacks Rock Dubai’s Palm, Burj Al Arab, Airport”, The Hindu, 2 March 2026.
[18] Moiz Mustafa, “Breaking Down the Israel–Iran Conflict: What We Know So Far – Day 16”, Daily Mirror, 16 March 2026.
[19] “US-made Kuwaiti Jet Mistakenly Shot Down Three US F-15s, Probe Finds: WSJ”, The Economic Times, 4 March 2026.
[20] This refers to a condition where an algorithm may not be able to generalise or adapt to conditions outside a narrow set of assumptions. In such a situation, while AI may perform well under certain conditions, especially during training, it may not perform optimally, or even fail, when exposed to new, unexpected, or slightly modified inputs.
[21] Oumaima Moho Amer, “Morocco Joins 34 Countries in Endorsing ‘Pathways to Action’ Pact Towards Safe Governance of Military AI”, Morocco World News, 6 February 2026.
[22] “AI Weapons Regulation: Nations Divided as US, China Skip Global Pledge”, ET Enterprise AI, 6 February 2026.
Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA)
The Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), is a non-partisan, autonomous body dedicated to objective research and policy relevant studies on all aspects of defence and security. Its mission is to promote national and international security through the generation and dissemination of knowledge on defence and security-related issues. The Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) was formerly named The Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).
Signals Before Strikes: Electronic Warfare In The Iran War – Analysis
March 25, 2026
Observer Research Foundation
By Soumya Awasthi
The US-Israel war on Iran is being fought with missiles and drones, but some of the most consequential battles have remained invisible. The electromagnetic spectrum has emerged as a primary domain of strategic competition, operating beneath the threshold of declared hostilities while producing effects of profound operational consequence. This convergence of electronic warfare, cyber operations, and information dominance, executed deliberately below the threshold, represents what scholars of grey zone conflict have long theorised but rarely observed at this scale or level of sophistication.
This has profound implications for how all states must think about modern warfighting. When the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on 28 February 2026, the opening moves were not the B-2 bombers or the Tomahawk missiles. Rather, it was an invisible strike that defined the next phase of the conflict. Before the first strike aircraft crossed into Iranian airspace, the electromagnetic environment over Iran had already been systematically dismantled, with radars blinded, command-and-control links severed, and communications networks taken down. The kinetic campaign that followed was, in a very real sense, merely the visible layer of a battle that had already been decided in the spectrum.
This is not a footnote to the Iran conflict; it is among its central lessons. The convergence of kinetic, electronic, and cyber operations that has defined this war represents a significant evolution in how modern conflicts are fought, one that challenges long-held assumptions about military power, deterrence, and the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure. Understanding this convergence is not optional for any state that takes its own security seriously.
The US-Israel Campaign in the Electromagnetic Spectrum
The EA-18G Growler, the US Navy’s dedicated electronic warfare aircraft, was central to suppressing Iranian air defence radars and communications in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury. Reportedly, the United States deployed stealth aircraft, including the B-2 Spirit bomber and F-35 fighters, alongside the dedicated EA-18G Growler, whose primary function is to jam enemy radar and communication systems. Space-based assets, including the US Space Force’s satellite constellation, provided real-time missile warning and intelligence support. The operational sequence was clear: suppress, blind, then strike.
Within hours of the strikes, Iran’s communications were severely degraded. Iran’s internet connectivity dropped to approximately 4 percent of normal traffic levels. Government services were disrupted, and state television satellite feeds were hijacked to broadcast pro-regime-change messages.
Critically, the Bade Saba Calendar, a simple religious app used by millions of Iranians, became the perfect vehicle for a sophisticated cyber-psychological operation. Israel compromised the application, and users received messages that read, in translation: “Help has arrived. Do not fear.” It was a pre-planned psychological operation executed in coordination with the kinetic campaign, suggesting months of prior access and preparation.
Previously, in June 2025, during Operation Rising Lion, Israel’s 5114th Spectrum Warfare Battalion used real-time electromagnetic spectrum manipulation to neutralise a substantial proportion of the drone threats launched against Israeli territory. Following that campaign, the IDF restructured its C4I directorate, formally establishing dedicated AI and Spectrum Divisions — an institutional acknowledgement that electronic warfare (EW) and artificial intelligence are now primary instruments of air defence rather than merely supplementary capabilities.
Iran’s Search for Asymmetric Advantage
Iran’s EW response has been constrained but not negligible. Its greatest success has come not in the air but at sea. The Strait of Hormuz, a 39-kilometre-wide chokepoint through which around 20 percent of the world’s oil moves, has witnessed sophisticated electronic interference affecting both military and commercial shipping since February 2026. According to open-source intelligence tracking, within 24 hours of the first US-Israeli strikes, more than 1,100 commercial ships in UAE, Qatari, Omani, and Iranian waters reported navigation failures. Onboard GPS systems placed vessels at airports, nuclear plants, and landlocked locations, a classic signature of active spoofing. By the end of the first week, Lloyd’s List Intelligence had logged 1,735 interference events affecting 655 vessels, with daily incidents nearly doubling.
Iran also targeted data centres in the Gulf, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in Bahrain. These were not military installations, raising questions about the resilience, sovereignty, and security of digital infrastructure. Since 2011, Iran has steadily invested in GPS spoofing and jamming infrastructure to offset the United States’ advantages in air- and space-based EW capabilities. The effects rippled outward: energy prices spiked, insurance rates for Gulf shipping increased, and several major carriers diverted routes, adding time and cost to global supply chains.
Iran also attempted to disrupt Starlink terminals by using 7787 military-grade “kill switch” GPS jammers, slowing internet performance across the country and demonstrating that Iranian EW planners were thinking creatively within their constraints. In the cyber domain, Iran-aligned groups launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaigns, website defacements, and data-wiping operations against US targets and entities across Gulf countries. The most significant incident so far has been the March 2026 attack by the Iranian hacker group Handala on Stryker Corporation, a major US medical technology firm, which disrupted global operations and resulted in the exfiltration of large volumes of sensitive data.
Implications for Warfighting
The current hostilities demonstrate that EW is no longer a support function; it is among the primary enablers and force multipliers of modern combat. The US-Israel coalition’s decision to begin the campaign by dismantling Iran’s electromagnetic environment before firing a single kinetic weapon was not merely a tactical choice but a doctrinal statement. Control of the spectrum precedes control of the sky, the sea, and the ground. Any military that cannot contest the spectrum at the outset of a conflict will fight blindly, as Iran has largely been forced to do.
Second, asymmetric EW is a genuine equaliser, albeit within limits. Iran’s GPS spoofing campaign demonstrated that a state without air superiority or space-based EW assets can still impose high tactical and strategic costs through targeted electromagnetic disruption of civilian systems. The disruption of shipping traffic and the effective closure of the world’s most critical oil lane are not trivial achievements. However, once the IRGC cyber headquarters was destroyed in a kinetic strike, Iran’s ability to centralise and coordinate EW operations was severely degraded. Therefore, no matter how effective asymmetric EW capabilities are, they remain vulnerable to kinetic dominance.
Third, the civilian-military divide in EW has largely dissipated. Interconnected digital infrastructure — including data centres, navigation systems, power grids, hospitals, and communications networks — is a civilian asset first and a military target second. Collective hacktivist umbrellas such as the Cyber Islamic Resistance illustrate how boundaries between civilian and military spheres have blurred, bringing collusion between state and non-state actors to the forefront.
Populations bearing the costs of EW warfare through fuel shortages, flight disruptions, and cascading supply-chain failures have become indirect casualties of the conflict. Countries that fail to take cognisance of these new realities in their policymaking risk operating under a dangerous illusion.
Rethinking Security in the Age of Electromagnetic Warfare
The Iran conflict makes one thing distinctly clear: states that cannot protect their electromagnetic environment, navigation systems, communications, or critical data infrastructure are strategically vulnerable in ways that no degree of conventional military investment can compensate for. This is not a problem unique to states in the Middle East. It is a challenge for every nation that operates GPS-dependent infrastructure, relies on commercial cloud computing, or has not yet invested in GNSS-independent navigation backup systems.
For India, this lesson is reinforced by the experiences of the Galwan Valley conflict in 2020 and Operation Sindoor in 2025, which demonstrated the battlefield effectiveness of India’s indigenous EW systems. However, the Iran conflict shows that the next frontier is not the battlefield itself but spectrum dominance — controlling data centres, communications, and command-and-control systems before moving towards kinetic build-up.
Further, civilian infrastructure is now a primary target rather than collateral damage. India’s coastline, Indian Ocean shipping lanes, and GNSS-dependent aviation and energy systems face similar vulnerabilities from adversaries such as China, which possesses considerably more sophisticated EW capabilities than Iran. Understanding this shift — from non-kinetic to kinetic operations, and the growing collusion between state actors and hacktivist or other non-state actors — is vital for building the doctrine, infrastructure, and institutions needed to respond to the security challenges of the decade ahead.
Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.
Observer Research Foundation
ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.
March 25, 2026
Observer Research Foundation
By Soumya Awasthi
The US-Israel war on Iran is being fought with missiles and drones, but some of the most consequential battles have remained invisible. The electromagnetic spectrum has emerged as a primary domain of strategic competition, operating beneath the threshold of declared hostilities while producing effects of profound operational consequence. This convergence of electronic warfare, cyber operations, and information dominance, executed deliberately below the threshold, represents what scholars of grey zone conflict have long theorised but rarely observed at this scale or level of sophistication.
This has profound implications for how all states must think about modern warfighting. When the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on 28 February 2026, the opening moves were not the B-2 bombers or the Tomahawk missiles. Rather, it was an invisible strike that defined the next phase of the conflict. Before the first strike aircraft crossed into Iranian airspace, the electromagnetic environment over Iran had already been systematically dismantled, with radars blinded, command-and-control links severed, and communications networks taken down. The kinetic campaign that followed was, in a very real sense, merely the visible layer of a battle that had already been decided in the spectrum.
This is not a footnote to the Iran conflict; it is among its central lessons. The convergence of kinetic, electronic, and cyber operations that has defined this war represents a significant evolution in how modern conflicts are fought, one that challenges long-held assumptions about military power, deterrence, and the vulnerability of civilian infrastructure. Understanding this convergence is not optional for any state that takes its own security seriously.
The US-Israel Campaign in the Electromagnetic Spectrum
The EA-18G Growler, the US Navy’s dedicated electronic warfare aircraft, was central to suppressing Iranian air defence radars and communications in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury. Reportedly, the United States deployed stealth aircraft, including the B-2 Spirit bomber and F-35 fighters, alongside the dedicated EA-18G Growler, whose primary function is to jam enemy radar and communication systems. Space-based assets, including the US Space Force’s satellite constellation, provided real-time missile warning and intelligence support. The operational sequence was clear: suppress, blind, then strike.
Within hours of the strikes, Iran’s communications were severely degraded. Iran’s internet connectivity dropped to approximately 4 percent of normal traffic levels. Government services were disrupted, and state television satellite feeds were hijacked to broadcast pro-regime-change messages.
Critically, the Bade Saba Calendar, a simple religious app used by millions of Iranians, became the perfect vehicle for a sophisticated cyber-psychological operation. Israel compromised the application, and users received messages that read, in translation: “Help has arrived. Do not fear.” It was a pre-planned psychological operation executed in coordination with the kinetic campaign, suggesting months of prior access and preparation.
Previously, in June 2025, during Operation Rising Lion, Israel’s 5114th Spectrum Warfare Battalion used real-time electromagnetic spectrum manipulation to neutralise a substantial proportion of the drone threats launched against Israeli territory. Following that campaign, the IDF restructured its C4I directorate, formally establishing dedicated AI and Spectrum Divisions — an institutional acknowledgement that electronic warfare (EW) and artificial intelligence are now primary instruments of air defence rather than merely supplementary capabilities.
Iran’s Search for Asymmetric Advantage
Iran’s EW response has been constrained but not negligible. Its greatest success has come not in the air but at sea. The Strait of Hormuz, a 39-kilometre-wide chokepoint through which around 20 percent of the world’s oil moves, has witnessed sophisticated electronic interference affecting both military and commercial shipping since February 2026. According to open-source intelligence tracking, within 24 hours of the first US-Israeli strikes, more than 1,100 commercial ships in UAE, Qatari, Omani, and Iranian waters reported navigation failures. Onboard GPS systems placed vessels at airports, nuclear plants, and landlocked locations, a classic signature of active spoofing. By the end of the first week, Lloyd’s List Intelligence had logged 1,735 interference events affecting 655 vessels, with daily incidents nearly doubling.
Iran also targeted data centres in the Gulf, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) facilities in Bahrain. These were not military installations, raising questions about the resilience, sovereignty, and security of digital infrastructure. Since 2011, Iran has steadily invested in GPS spoofing and jamming infrastructure to offset the United States’ advantages in air- and space-based EW capabilities. The effects rippled outward: energy prices spiked, insurance rates for Gulf shipping increased, and several major carriers diverted routes, adding time and cost to global supply chains.
Iran also attempted to disrupt Starlink terminals by using 7787 military-grade “kill switch” GPS jammers, slowing internet performance across the country and demonstrating that Iranian EW planners were thinking creatively within their constraints. In the cyber domain, Iran-aligned groups launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaigns, website defacements, and data-wiping operations against US targets and entities across Gulf countries. The most significant incident so far has been the March 2026 attack by the Iranian hacker group Handala on Stryker Corporation, a major US medical technology firm, which disrupted global operations and resulted in the exfiltration of large volumes of sensitive data.
Implications for Warfighting
The current hostilities demonstrate that EW is no longer a support function; it is among the primary enablers and force multipliers of modern combat. The US-Israel coalition’s decision to begin the campaign by dismantling Iran’s electromagnetic environment before firing a single kinetic weapon was not merely a tactical choice but a doctrinal statement. Control of the spectrum precedes control of the sky, the sea, and the ground. Any military that cannot contest the spectrum at the outset of a conflict will fight blindly, as Iran has largely been forced to do.
Second, asymmetric EW is a genuine equaliser, albeit within limits. Iran’s GPS spoofing campaign demonstrated that a state without air superiority or space-based EW assets can still impose high tactical and strategic costs through targeted electromagnetic disruption of civilian systems. The disruption of shipping traffic and the effective closure of the world’s most critical oil lane are not trivial achievements. However, once the IRGC cyber headquarters was destroyed in a kinetic strike, Iran’s ability to centralise and coordinate EW operations was severely degraded. Therefore, no matter how effective asymmetric EW capabilities are, they remain vulnerable to kinetic dominance.
Third, the civilian-military divide in EW has largely dissipated. Interconnected digital infrastructure — including data centres, navigation systems, power grids, hospitals, and communications networks — is a civilian asset first and a military target second. Collective hacktivist umbrellas such as the Cyber Islamic Resistance illustrate how boundaries between civilian and military spheres have blurred, bringing collusion between state and non-state actors to the forefront.
Populations bearing the costs of EW warfare through fuel shortages, flight disruptions, and cascading supply-chain failures have become indirect casualties of the conflict. Countries that fail to take cognisance of these new realities in their policymaking risk operating under a dangerous illusion.
Rethinking Security in the Age of Electromagnetic Warfare
The Iran conflict makes one thing distinctly clear: states that cannot protect their electromagnetic environment, navigation systems, communications, or critical data infrastructure are strategically vulnerable in ways that no degree of conventional military investment can compensate for. This is not a problem unique to states in the Middle East. It is a challenge for every nation that operates GPS-dependent infrastructure, relies on commercial cloud computing, or has not yet invested in GNSS-independent navigation backup systems.
For India, this lesson is reinforced by the experiences of the Galwan Valley conflict in 2020 and Operation Sindoor in 2025, which demonstrated the battlefield effectiveness of India’s indigenous EW systems. However, the Iran conflict shows that the next frontier is not the battlefield itself but spectrum dominance — controlling data centres, communications, and command-and-control systems before moving towards kinetic build-up.
Further, civilian infrastructure is now a primary target rather than collateral damage. India’s coastline, Indian Ocean shipping lanes, and GNSS-dependent aviation and energy systems face similar vulnerabilities from adversaries such as China, which possesses considerably more sophisticated EW capabilities than Iran. Understanding this shift — from non-kinetic to kinetic operations, and the growing collusion between state actors and hacktivist or other non-state actors — is vital for building the doctrine, infrastructure, and institutions needed to respond to the security challenges of the decade ahead.
About the author: Soumya Awasthi is a Fellow with the Centre for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation.
Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.
Observer Research Foundation
ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.
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