Centcom commander touts use of AI in fight against Iran during Operation Epic Fury
Artificial intelligence tools have helped the U.S. military fight faster and smarter during Operation Epic Fury, according to the commander overseeing the war effort.
To date, American forces have hit more than 5,500 targets inside Iran, Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a video released Wednesday.
“We’re on a path to eliminating Iran’s ability to threaten Americans and our friends, and we are achieving this through a combination of lethality, precision and rapid innovation,” he said, noting that warfighters are using a variety of advanced AI tools.
“These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot. But advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds,” Cooper added.
The Centcom boss did not identify specific artificial intelligence systems that the command has employed.
The U.S. military has reportedly been using the Maven Smart System built by Palantir and Anthropic’s Claude AI technology to help with the Epic Fury campaign.
The Pentagon recently designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk after a heated dispute about terms of use for the contractor’s technology, and the company has sued the Defense Department and other federal agencies in response.
During the first 10 days of Epic Fury, which was launched Feb. 28 under the orders of President Donald Trump, Centcom has been hitting a variety of targets, including drone and ballistic missile sites, command-and-control facilities, ships, air defense systems and military communications capabilities, among others.
The campaign has also included the combat debut of new weapon systems, such as LUCAS drones and the Precision Strike Missile.
“U.S. combat power is building. Iranian combat power is declining,” Cooper said in the video.
Since the opening day of the war, Iranian drone and ballistic missile attacks have dropped “drastically,” he noted.
Last week, Cooper said that in the early days of the fight Iran had launched more than 2,000 drones and 500 ballistic missiles.
During a press briefing Tuesday, Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that Iranian drone attacks have decreased 83 percent since the beginning of the operation, and Tehran’s ballistic missile attacks have gone down 90 percent.
It’s unclear how much longer Epic Fury will last.
On Wednesday, Trump reportedly told Axios that the operation may end “soon,” and that there’s “practically nothing left to target.”
Trump administration officials previously projected that the effort could last several weeks, but might run longer, depending on how the situation evolves.
According to Cooper, about 50,000 American service members are currently deployed in and around the Middle East.
At least seven U.S. troops have died during Epic Fury, including fatalities from an Iranian drone attack against a location in Kuwait. About 140 have been wounded, according to news reports.
