Capt. Bianca C. Wilkerson, 37, of Norfolk, Virginia, died Sept. 18 “as a result of a non-combat-related incident,” the Army said Wednesday. A defense official confirmed she was posthumously promoted to major.

Wilkerson was assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Army Central & Third Army at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, and was deployed to Doha, Qatar, where she was supporting overseas operations, according to the Army.

A defense official previously told Task & Purpose that Wilkerson suffered a medical incident while aboard a military flight en route to Saudi Arabia. Her death was added to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, on Sept. 21, before the Army publicly identified her on Sept. 23.

The DCAS entry lists Wilkerson’s death as “pending” under the category “Overseas Operations,” rather than under Operation Epic Fury, the Defense Department’s name for the initial U.S. military operation against Iran.

A defense official said the classification reflects the Defense Department’s treatment of casualties in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility after Operation Epic Fury, which the Pentagon said ended May 5.

“Since Operation Epic Fury concluded, the Department classifies casualties as having occurred in Overseas Operations in the [U.S. Central Command] area of responsibility,” the official said.

Wilkerson is the fifth service member listed under the Overseas Operations category. Four other service members who died in July are also listed in that category. Combined with the 14 deaths listed under Operation Epic Fury, Wilkerson’s death brings the public DCAS tally to 19 since the start of the Iran war.

The Defense Casualty Analysis System is the Defense Department’s public casualty database. The Defense Manpower Data Center maintains the system, while the military services provide the underlying casualty information.

A defense official said the classification used in DCAS is separate from determinations concerning a service member’s pay and benefits.

DCAS lists Wilkerson’s death as non-hostile, with the cause listed as “undetermined.” The Army has separately described her death as non-combat-related, while the defense official said she died following a medical incident.

The incident remains under investigation, and an autopsy is pending, according to the Army.

Wilkerson graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve as a transportation officer in 2013, according to the Army.

She served as an executive officer with the 678th Transportation Company in Newport News, Virginia, before moving into active-duty assignments that included logistics and transportation positions with units in the 1st Armored Division and 25th Infantry Division. She later commanded a forward-support company with the 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

In 2023, Wilkerson became company commander of the Huntington Beach Recruiting Company with the Southern California Recruiting Battalion. In 2025, she was reassigned as the G4 supply and services chief for Headquarters, U.S. Army Central & Third Army at Shaw Air Force Base.

Her military awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal (1 Oak Leaf Cluster), Army Superior Unit Award, Army Reserve Component Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon, according to the Army.

Bianca Wilkerson loved animals and was a longtime volunteer at her local animal shelter, continuing to help out wherever the Army took her next. Those who served alongside Wilkerson remember her as a demanding leader who took responsibility for the people and missions entrusted to her. Lt. Col. Markus Hopkins, who served with her, said she understood the weight that came with that responsibility.

“She understood what it meant to be accountable for something bigger than herself,” Hopkins said. “She carried that weight with pride and seriousness.”

“I am incredibly relieved and think the outcome is very sensible. We can be satisfied,” Naaja Nathanielsen, a Greenlandic MP in the Danish parliament, told Reuters.

Parliament speaker Kim Kielsen urged households to raise the Greenlandic flag on Wednesday. Activist and influencer Orla Joelsen encouraged residents in the capital, Nuuk, to show up at the airport to welcome the prime minister and foreign minister back from New York, where they struck the deal.

New US bases

The agreement allows the U.S. to expand its military presence on Greenland, reopening Cold War-era bases in the settlements of Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig, with a prospect of renewed spending and employment potential.

But it stopped short of Trump’s unsettling previous demand that the U.S. annex Greenland to head off the growing Arctic presence of Russia and China.

“There has previously been a significant American presence in Greenland, so this is nothing new,” added Nathanielsen. “However, in light of the unrest over the past few years, there is likely greater scepticism in Greenland, and consequently, work needs to be done to reassure the local population.”

The U.S. first built military bases in Greenland during World War II. During the Cold War, it maintained 17 military installations and more than 10,000 personnel to monitor Soviet forces. Today, only Pituffik Space Base remains, with some 150 U.S. military personnel.

Residents divided

Pitanguaq Mikissen, 69, a retired ship assistant, said the potential reopening of some old U.S. bases gave greater security to the territory’s 57,000 people.

But not all residents were happy.

“I think that Trump is really good at creating a lot of worry and a lot of fear,” said Jensia Dam-Davidsen, 40, a voice and choir teacher.

“It (the deal) seems wrong in every way — especially now that Denmark has expanded their military presence here.”

Denmark has significantly increased its own military footprint in Greenland since Trump’s threats peaked in January, deploying additional troops, boosting Arctic defence spending and hosting allies under military exercises.

Malene Vahl Rasmussen, mayor of Kujalleq municipality in southern Greenland, where the U.S. is looking to reopen the Narsasuaq military base, said that under the agreement, U.S. military expansion must respect the Greenlandic way of life to protect hunting and fishing.

“You can’t simply say, ‘OK, we’ve signed this, so now we trust you again’. Trust really needs to be rebuilt within that partnership,” she told Reuters.

Some Greenlanders worry that expanded military activity — including increased aircraft and vessel movement — could disrupt hunting and fishing grounds that communities rely on for a living, though the agreement states such activity must respect Greenlandic society and traditional ways of life.

Now, the Pentagon is adding a new measure for advancement: how officers perform when presented with a military problem and required to make decisions under pressure.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that eligible Army, Air Force and Marine Corps colonels and Navy captains screening for promotion to one-star will undergo a new Joint Warfighter Evaluation, or JWE. The assessment is intended to measure officers’ operational planning, decision-making and leadership under simulated combat conditions. It will supplement, rather than replace, existing service promotion processes.

The JWE grew out of Hegseth’s broader effort to change how the military evaluates and promotes senior leaders. In announcing the evaluation, Hegseth said the effort had been in development for about a year and that the assessment is intended to measure officers’ ability to “fight, adapt, and win” in a chaotic battlespace.

Internal service plans obtained and reviewed by Fox News show that the JWE consists of six versions, one for each of the five military services and another through the Joint Staff.

The assessments vary considerably, ranging from remote written assessments and digital simulations to hours-long, in-person wargames, Fox News reported. In some versions, officers will be presented with a military problem and make decisions as an AI-powered adversary responds to their moves; another brings officers to a war college for an in-person wargame in which evaluators observe their responses as an opposing force counters their decisions.

Service-specific figures and formats were made available by Fox News, which reported that it reviewed internal documents. The reporting had not been independently confirmed by the Pentagon as of Tuesday evening.

According to the news outlet, Army plans to assess roughly 900 eligible colonels through a remote written assessment, followed by a digital wargame. The Air Force intends to give a two-hour online analysis followed by a one-hour interactive simulation for roughly 1,330 colonels. The Space Force will follow a similar format for roughly 125 officers.

The Navy is planning an in-person assessment for roughly 308 captains in the unrestricted line and information warfare communities. Those officers are expected to travel to the Naval War College for a three-hour written assessment followed by a two- to three-hour wargame.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps plans to use an eight-hour remote evaluation for up to 175 colonels using an AI-enabled platform that combines written assessments with situational-judgment tests. Comparable details about the format of the Joint Staff version have not been revealed.

The Pentagon has not established how heavily the results will influence promotion decisions.

Stuart Scheller, the senior Pentagon adviser leading the effort, told Fox News that existing performance reports will remain the “bedrock” of promotion decisions, with the JWE providing an additional data point.

“The secretary still has judgment based on how it will be weighted in the board, so we haven’t determined. We’re kind of waiting to see how well this thing is rolled out,” Scheller said.

The first assessments are expected to take place from February through June 2027, ahead of O-7 promotion boards scheduled for July through September. The Pentagon plans to study the results from that first cycle before determining how the assessment should evolve and how much influence it should have on future promotion boards.

Scheller also acknowledged that no exercise can perfectly recreate the pressures of combat and said the Pentagon expects to change the assessments as it learns from the first cycle.

“Right now in our current system, we have people that are very good at navigating their careers,” Scheller said. “We have very good — I want to be clear, very good — military personnel and leaders across the military, but there isn’t a stand-alone function that can truly assess the best military commanders on the battlefield.”

The poll, completed on Sunday, was conducted over a four-day period that saw Trump throw three major news organizations out of the White House and muse that Washington’s iconic Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — named after slain President John F. Kennedy — could be torn down if Trump’s own name could not be added to it.

It found voters leaning away from supporting Trump’s fellow Republicans in the Nov. 3 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress for the next two years.

Trump’s overall approval was down from a reading of 35% in last week’s Reuters/Ipsos poll, with support among his own Republicans down to 73% from 82% a week earlier.

Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 on promises to tame inflation and end foreign wars. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in the hours after he was sworn in, he enjoyed a 47% approval rating.

Just 17% of respondents in the new poll approved of his handling of the cost of living — the top issue Americans say will determine how they vote in November.

Iran takes a toll

Dissatisfaction among Republicans on inflation has been growing since Trump launched the war on Iran in February that has pushed gasoline and diesel prices sharply higher. Now for the first time, Republicans who disapprove of Trump’s handling of the cost of living outnumber those who give him a thumbs up — 51% to 44%.

Trump’s approval rating is lower than any recorded for his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, whose presidency was also marked by surging inflation and who ultimately ended his reelection bid after a poor debate performance heightened concerns about his age. Biden’s low was 35%, reached in late October 2024.

Only 34% of the most recent poll respondents approve of the strikes on Iran. The conflict has cut the world off from a significant slice of the oil and gas produced in the Middle East, and threatens to stoke higher inflation in the US and elsewhere as businesses pass on higher fuel costs to consumers.

Trump initially said the conflict would last a few weeks and that Iran needed to be bombed to stop it from developing nuclear weapons. Earlier this month, the Republican leader pledged the war would end “immediately after” the election. But Iran has shown no sign of giving up, and in recent weeks Tehran and its allies have threatened further disruptions to oil markets.

Some 82% of poll respondents — including nine in ten Democrats and three-quarters of Republicans — said the conflict would likely go on for an “extended period of time.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed registered voters in the poll picked Democrats over Republicans — 43% to 35% — when asked how they would vote in the midterms. The eight-point gap was the biggest lead for Democrats in Reuters/Ipsos polling this year. For Republicans, losing control of either chamber could complicate Trump’s agenda in the last two years of his term.

The poll results on congressional voting plans provide an overall view of which party Americans nationwide want to see ​in charge in Congress, though the results don’t capture all the nuances of the state-by-state and district-by-district contests that determine control of the ​Senate and House of Representatives.

Trump remains popular among Republicans on the issue of immigration — with 79% of his party backing him — but only 36% of Americans overall support his approach to the matter and 55% disapprove. Some Republican allies in Congress have warned that his aggressive campaign to deport people in the country illegally risks alienating voters with family who recently immigrated to America, like some Hispanics.

Some 35% of poll respondents approve of Trump’s approach to fighting crime, compared to 50% who disapprove.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online and gathered 1,277 responses from US adults nationwide. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg gave industry leaders until Aug. 26 to submit plans for “significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” according to his Aug. 5 memo.

Feinberg directed companies to identify ways to accelerate production and delivery, propose capital investments and facility expansions and explain how the Pentagon could enable higher production.

The memo identified 16 critical programs under consideration for accelerated production or increased procurement. The responses were intended to inform the department’s fiscal 2028 budget request.

The request came as the use of U.S. weapons during the Iran war put pressure on stocks of air-defense interceptors and other precision munitions.

U.S. inventories of Patriot interceptors had fallen from about 2,330 before the war to between 759 and 827 by the end of July, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis. THAAD stocks had fallen from 452 to between 234 and 278.

CSIS estimated production timelines of about 42 months for PAC-3 MSE interceptors and 53 months for THAAD interceptors.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about how many companies responded to Feinberg’s request or whether the department had accepted or funded any of the proposals.

General Dynamics also declined to discuss its communications with the department.

“We are not able to comment on our communications with the Department of War,” a General Dynamics spokesman said.

Lockheed Martin, a major supplier of U.S. missile-defense systems, did not provide a specific production timeline in response to questions from Military Times.

“We continue to have dialogue with the U.S. government to deliver what the department is asking of us and our team is pushing to do even more, faster,” a Lockheed Martin spokesman said. “We’re making significant investments in our workforce, infrastructure and production capacity and working with key suppliers to accelerate delivery of the critical capabilities that strengthen America’s Arsenal of Freedom.”

Lockheed separately announced Thursday that it had received its first PAC-3 MSE housing components from GM Defense, 22 days after the companies signed a production contract. The company said the components, which can traditionally take months or years to produce, were manufactured using GM’s casting and machining capabilities.

Lockheed said it is investing $8 billion to $9 billion to expand munitions production, including new buildings, facility expansions and thousands of jobs at more than 20 U.S. sites. The company also said planned expansions will increase its munitions production and warehousing space by nearly 50%.

The company did not say whether those investments were submitted as part of Feinberg’s Aug. 5 request.

New agreements

The Pentagon was already using framework agreements and contracts to accelerate production before Feinberg’s deadline.

On July 27, the department announced seven-year framework agreements intended to boost production of propulsion components for PAC-3 MSE and THAAD interceptors. L3Harris said its PAC-3 agreement would nearly triple production of certain propulsion products, while its THAAD agreement was intended to quadruple production of key propulsion components.

On Aug. 3, the defense department, in cooperation with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, announced two framework agreements to expand production capacity for critical PAC-3 and THAAD interceptor components. The agreements were intended to support the department’s goals of tripling PAC-3 production capacity and quadrupling THAAD production capacity.

On Aug. 14, DoD announced two separate framework agreements with Boeing and RTX to increase production of components for SM-3 Block IB and SM-3 Block IIA interceptors.

On Aug. 17, the Pentagon announced a $22.9 billion Navy contract with RTX to accelerate production of Tomahawk missiles.

On Aug. 31, five days after the industry deadline, the Pentagon announced additional seven-year multiyear procurement agreements with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics designed to increase production quantities and accelerate delivery schedules for critical missile subcomponents supporting PAC-3 MSE and THAAD.

The Pentagon separately identified production goals of tripling PAC-3 MSE production capacity and quadrupling THAAD production capacity, with funding subject to annual appropriations from Congress.

The public announcements did not identify those agreements as resulting from companies’ responses to Feinberg’s Aug. 5 request.

What remains unclear is whether the 21-day exercise changed what the Pentagon plans to buy, how quickly it expects industry to deliver it or what additional funding and infrastructure the department will seek in its fiscal 2028 budget request.

Announced in the Federal Register Sept. 11, the Homeland Defense Board aims to fill a gap Hegseth sees in providing military guidance to homeland security missions.

“The specific, integrated advice required by the SecWar regarding the military’s mission of defense of the Homeland and Homeland security cooperation is not available from any other Federal advisory committee, government agency, or alternative source,” establishing documents state.

“Department of war” and “secretary of war” are the Trump administration’s preferred monikers for the Defense Department and its head. Legislation to legally change the agency name is pending in Congress.

“While other agencies and departments operate within specific mission or geographic areas, their advisory mechanisms are statutorily constrained to their respective non-military domains,” the panel’s establishing documents add. “Relying solely on internal DoW staff or contracted studies is also insufficient, as it fails to provide the consensus-based, independent, and external peer review required at the highest levels of strategic decision-making.”

The board is to consist of up to 20 members, including the secretary of defense, who will serve as chair; the assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs as vice chair; and the deputy assistant secretaries of defense for Homeland Defense and Defense Continuity and Mission Assurance.

Also on the board will be one civilian and one field- or mid-grade officer from each military branch and “such other members as the SecWar or the Deputy Secretary of War may appoint or designate,” establishing documents state.

Asked for comment, an official said the Pentagon had “nothing to provide” about the new board’s creation.

The advisory board is the first of its kind for the Pentagon focused on homeland security, and the announcement argues that no other agency’s board can fill the need that defense leaders now see. The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Advisory Council cannot fill the role because it focuses on civilian law enforcement and “lacks the mandate to advise on Title 10 or Title 32 [domestic troop] deployments” and military-specific crises, it states.

It also finds the Department of State’s International Security Advisory Board, with its focus on diplomacy and arms control, “underequipped” to deliver strategies for military campaign plans in the Americas.

“Over the past 10 years, rather than lessening, the threat from peer, near-peer, and rogue-state adversaries, in addition to non-state actors and hostile asymmetric activities, has become more intense and complex,” justifying documents continue. “The DoW provides for the common defense of American citizens and the Homeland by deploying and maintaining the premier warfighting force across the globe to provide a multi-domain, layered defense … In an era where peer and near-peer adversaries are actively projecting economic, cyber, and military power into the Western Hemisphere, the HDB will provide critical, independent assessments of the DoW’s hemispheric defensive posture and domestic security preparedness.”

The large-scale deployment of National Guard troops to U.S. cities to support law enforcement; the ongoing deployment of troops to the southern border; and the aggressive move into drug interdiction missions traditionally executed by the U.S. Coast Guard have all blurred the lines between the mission sets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. The establishing memo suggests the new board will create a bridge between the two that didn’t previously exist.

“The [Homeland Defense Board] will … provide the SecWar advice and recommendations necessary for strategic oversight for multi-theater security cooperation and multi-domain actions, validating that DoW resource investments and allocations are successfully countering foreign influence, disrupting transnational criminal networks, and building robust partner-nation military capabilities,” it states.

“Finally, the HDB’s advice and recommendations will serve an essential function by bridging the gap between the military and domestic Homeland security agencies to secure the defense critical infrastructure, vital transport networks and logistics nodes and the defense industrial base. Without this advisory body, the DoW risks strategic blind spots in its primary mission to protect the Homeland.”

According to the General Services Administration, there are now roughly 40 federal advisory committees serving the Pentagon. In March 2025, shortly after taking office, Hegseth dismissed all members of existing boards to conduct a “zero-based review” of their necessity and contribution to “warrior ethos.” Among boards terminated at the review’s conclusion were the 75-year-old Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services and the Defense Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct.

The president cited national security concerns for the move, echoing the rationale offered for the roughly $400 million ballroom complex being built on the site of the White House’s former East Wing, which was demolished to make way for the project. He did not identify any specific threats.

The projects are part of Trump’s ambitious effort to reshape Washington, including a push to add his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The plans have drawn criticism from preservationists and others who argue they could alter or diminish historic landmarks.

In a social media post, Trump said that at the “strong request” of the military he had agreed to turn the 250-foot (76-meter) arch “into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

The White House and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Federal Aviation Administration said last week that the arch would not pose a hazard to aircraft but would be required to have an “eternal flame” on top, clearing an aviation hurdle for the arch, which Trump proposed to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Aviation experts have raised safety concerns given its proximity to Reagan Washington National Airport, while veterans have sued to block the arch, arguing it would destroy the historic sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

The initiative, first announced in a July memo by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is part of the agency’s Warfighter Performance Optimization program, which Hegseth announced in May.

On Sept. 3, the Pentagon temporarily rescinded its published clinical guidance for a new, mandatory testosterone-deficiency screening policy, with an official telling Reuters, “The draft [document] published on September 2, 2026, has been temporarily rescinded to allow for updates.”

The Defense Health Agency’s latest guideline indicates that every male service member over 30 — and some under that age, if they show symptoms of low testosterone and request testing — should be tested at Periodic Health Assessments, or PHAs.

According to the new document’s executive summary, symptoms of low testosterone include “reduced libido, loss of spontaneous morning erections, erectile dysfunction, diminished energy and physical performance, impaired concentration, reduced muscle mass, and depressed mood.”

It also notes that those symptoms can “overlap substantially with the effects of sleep restriction, caloric deficit, psychological stress, mild traumatic brain injury, and mood disorders, all of which are prevalent in the operational population.”

Hegseth’s July memo indicated all service members would undergo testosterone testing, but the recent announcement clarified that only men would be required to do so. Clinical guidance for women is forthcoming, according to a department release.

But the Pentagon has not publicly clarified whether women service members would be tested for estrogen or testosterone therapy, the Associated Press reported.

Clinical research supports the effectiveness of testosterone therapy in older men, particularly with hypogonadism, a condition in which the body is incapable of producing adequate testosterone. However, the benefits for younger men and men who are aging normally are not as clear. There are also potential long-term risks such as infertility.

The concern, critics say, is not limited to weapons that can select and engage targets on their own.

At the hearing, titled “Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain: Implications for Human Rights,” witnesses told members of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission that AI can influence human decisions leading to a strike while leaving the individual formally responsible for the final call.

“The approval button alone does not demonstrate the control,” Anna Mysyshyn, a Ukrainian AI-governance researcher, told lawmakers.

The issue comes as the Pentagon pushes to use AI to accelerate military decision-making. The Pentagon’s 2023 AI adoption strategy identified “fast, precise and resilient kill chains” as a desired outcome, while its 2026 AI strategy calls for becoming an “AI-first” warfighting force by redesigning military workflows and operational concepts around current AI capabilities.

Mysyshyn questioned whether a person supervising multiple AI-enabled systems can recognize an incorrect recommendation and intervene fast enough before harm occurs. She cited Ukraine as an example of AI compressing decisions from hours to minutes.

In many scenarios, a human making the final decision does not necessarily have enough information, time or the ability to challenge the system’s recommendation, she said.

The Defense Department’s 2023 directive on autonomy in weapon systems requires autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.

Wednesday’s testimony focused on a broader question: whether that judgment remains meaningful if AI is influencing targeting faster than a human can authenticate.

Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy at Amnesty International USA, warned that AI can compress the military “kill chain” in ways that make it difficult to determine whether meaningful human discernment actually occurred before a strike.

Joseph Chapa, a former military officer and scholar of military ethics, argued that the debate should not focus solely on how autonomous a system is. He urged policymakers to consider whether an AI system relies on statistical inference, what happens when it fails in a particular operational environment and whether its decisions can be audited afterward.

Statistical AI systems can fail differently from traditional software, Chapa said, including producing substantially different outputs from relatively small changes in inputs. More complex systems can also make it difficult to reconstruct how a particular recommendation was produced after the fact.

He called for greater AI education across the military, including specialized training for personnel working with targeting and intelligence systems.

Witnesses on Wednesday also pointed to a larger accountability problem: determining what happens when an AI-assisted decision results in civilian harm.

The Defense Department established its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan in 2022, including a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence intended to serve as a hub for analysis and training. Federal law requires the Pentagon to operate the center.

But a Defense Department inspector general review released in May assessed the department’s implementation of the civilian-harm framework and found problems including the loss or reassignment of personnel, the end of funding for a civilian-harm data-management platform and the failure of a senior steering committee to continue meeting.

That matters in the case of AI because, as Klasing noted, the military currently has limited ability to determine whether AI may contribute to improper targeting of civilians.

On the first day of the U.S.-Iran war, a Tomahawk cruise missile struck Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, southern Iran. At least 168 people were killed — more than 100 of them under the age of 12, according to UN and Iranian officials.

The school building sat fewer than 100 yards from a long-time Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval installation and was previously located within the IRGC compound perimeter until a wall appeared between 2013 and 2016, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by Amnesty International.

By the time the U.S. and Israel launched their first strikes on Feb. 28, the school had been established several years prior. It was active on social media and had its own website, a Reuters investigation found.

More than 120 House Democrats sent a letter to the Pentagon on March 12, demanding clarity on whether artificial intelligence, “including the use of the Maven Smart System, [was] used to identify the Shajareh Tayyebeh school as a target.”

U.S. military investigators in the wake of the incident stated that the strike was likely carried out by U.S. forces. The Pentagon, however, has still not released its investigative findings.

Klasing proposed adding information about AI involvement to the Pentagon’s annual civilian-casualty reports required under Section 1057 of the National Defense Authorization Act. The existing reporting requirement calls for information about civilian casualty mitigation efforts and investigations, but does not specifically require the department to identify whether AI contributed to an incident.

Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Pentagon should collect data from military operations and conduct after-action reviews to determine whether AI-assisted systems accurately identified intended targets and whether errors contributed to civilian casualties.

“A bigger question is to what extent is the Pentagon collecting data and verifying the target accuracy of all these 1000s of strikes?” Feldstein said.

Feldstein also cautioned against treating AI itself as the source of every potential problem. AI can be used to help verify intelligence, detect changes in imagery and prioritize defensive responses to threats such as drones and ballistic missiles.

But if a human-influenced system is built around assumptions that certain demographic traits make someone a lawful target, Mysyshyn said, AI would not correct that underlying premise.

Feldstein similarly pointed to the rules humans establish before an AI system is used. If commanders determine that a particular level of civilian harm is acceptable in pursuit of a military objective, he said, the machine is operating within a human-defined framework.

The challenge is particularly acute when systems operate faster than people can meaningfully assess recommendations.

The commission opened Wednesday’s hearing with an example from Iraq. In 2004, Army squad leader Nick Ellison encountered two young men firing a machine gun from a car during a census patrol in Kirkuk.

Ellison made eye contact with one of the men, saw panic and ordered his soldiers to hold fire. The men turned out to be brothers of a newly married groom, and the gunfire was celebratory.

Mysyshyn said testing should examine bias, reliability, civilian protection, realistic time pressure, whether operators can interrupt systems and whether decisions can be traced throughout an AI system’s lifecycle.

Chapa said some AI systems may be difficult to audit after the fact, while Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch said information about military AI use has often emerged through investigative reporting and whistleblowers rather than government disclosures.

The growing challenge, according to witnesses, is no longer making a machine pull a trigger, but whether the human who approves the trigger pull has enough time, information and authority to make a meaningful choice before disaster.

Military Times reporter Katie Livingstone contributed to this report.

U.S. Central Command told IG investigators that “Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict.”

While the report provided no details on damaged military facilities, it did include specifics on damage to U.S. diplomatic facilities.

The State Department told investigators that “U.S. diplomatic facilities in four countries suffered physical damage from Iranian strikes, with an estimated total cost of about $184 million.”

U.S. diplomatic sites in Iraq suffered more than 600 attacks, while the embassies in Kuwait City and Riyadh were also hit.

Operation Epic Fury had cost the United States $33.4 billion as of June 29, based on Pentagon estimates. The amount includes $22.3 billion in expended munitions, $3.7 billion in equipment losses and $7.4 billion in costs beyond CENTCOM’s normal operating expenses.

However, these estimates do not count the costs of repairing infrastructure.

The Department of Defense “did not include the cost of military construction for damaged infrastructure in its estimate because the DoD has not determined what its future posture will be in the region, how it will construct its bases, and what percentage of the construction costs allies and partners will contribute,” the report states.

Because Congress did not appropriate funds for the war in Iran, the money is being funneled from normal operating budgets, such as amounts set aside for training and maintenance.

“The absence of a dedicated appropriation for OEF means that it can be difficult to calculate the total ‘cost’ of OEF,” noted the report, which is among the first official assessments of Operation Epic Fury since it began on Feb. 28.

Funding is also becoming an issue for U.S. Transportation Command, which flew more than 1,500 missions to support the mission.

“During peak OEF times, airlift surged to 30 to 40 daily missions directly into the CENTCOM [area of responsibility], with an additional 20 to 30 daily aircraft pushing into the USEUCOM AOR for transload operations,” the report said.

This cost nearly $2.4 billion as of June 30.

“While these obligations have been largely reimbursed by the military services to date, USTRANSCOM reported that it anticipates delayed payments moving forward as service funding is depleted without a supplemental appropriation,” the IG said.

The report confirmed that dozens of U.S. manned and unmanned aircraft have been destroyed or damaged, based on data from a Congressional Research Service report released in May and “vetted” by CENTCOM as of Aug. 24.

The tally of destroyed aircraft includes four F-15Es, one A-10, four AH-6 helicopters, one AH-64 and one MH-60, as well as an MQ-4C drone and as many as 30 MQ-9 Reapers.

The report listed 18 dead U.S. military personnel as of Aug. 27. The Pentagon claimed 417 wounded as of June 30, though casualty figures released in late August soared to 774.