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In the gulf war 1991, the international coalition took more than a month to launch some 100,000 airstrikes after weeks of planning. Three decades later, the ability to process military information has changed radically: satellites, sensors and drones generate amounts of data that no human team could analyze alone. In this new technological environment, the true battlefield is no longer just the air or the land, but the speed at which information is interpreted. From the drone to the algorithm. Recent wars had already anticipated a profound transformation of modern combat, but the conflict with Iran seems to have crossed a different technological frontier. If the war in ukraine popularized the massive use of drones as a dominant tool from the battlefield, the campaign against Iran has introduced a logical even more radical: integration artificial intelligence at the very heart of military decisions. In fact, the initial attacks showed an intensity difficult to imagine just a few years ago, with hundreds of targets hit in a matter of hours and thousands in a few days. That speed was not only the result of greater firepower, but also of the use of capable systems of analyzing enormous volumes of data and transforming that information into almost instantaneous attack plans. Understanding the “kill chain”. I remembered this morning the financial times that traditional war, the so-called chain of destruction (from identifying a target to launching the attack) was a long and bureaucratic process. Intelligence officers analyzed information, wrote reports, commanders evaluated options and finally the coup was authorized. A process that could take hours or even days. The incorporation of AI is reducing that cycle drastically. We are talking about platforms that integrate data from satellites, drones, sensors and intercepted communications that are capable of generating lists of targets, prioritizing them and suggesting the appropriate weapon in a matter of seconds. The result is extreme and disturbing compression of the kill chain: What once required prolonged deliberation now becomes an almost instantaneous sequence. The digital brain of the battlefield. Behind this acceleration are data analysis systems that act as a true operational “brain.” These platforms combine geospatial intelligence, machine learning and advanced language models to interpret information and propose military actions. Its most disruptive capacity is that it no longer only summarizes data, but can reason step by stepevaluate alternatives and generate tactical recommendations. This allows military commanders to process volumes of information that are impossible to handle manually and multiply the number of operational decisions made in the same period of time. In practice, algorithms are allowing select and execute objectives at a scale and speed that were previously unthinkable. Bomb faster than thought. The result of this transformation is a war that begins to move at a rapid speed. higher than human pace. Artificial intelligence can now analyze information, detect patterns and propose attacks faster than a team of analysts could even formulate the right questions. Some experts describe This phenomenon as a form of “compressed decision,” in which planning is reduced to such short windows of time that human managers can barely review what the machine has already processed. In this context, another disturbing idea: that destruction can precede the human reflection process itself, that is, first comes the recommendation generated by the algorithm and then the formal approval of the person who must execute it. And there, there is no doubt, we can have a problem of colossal dimensions. The human dilemma in algorithmic warfare. Because this technological acceleration is generating a growing debate about the real role of humans in military decision-making. Although the armed forces they insist As final control remains in the hands of people, the time available to evaluate system recommendations is increasingly reduced. Some analysts fear that this will lead to a form of “cognitive download”one in which military leaders end up automatically trusting the decisions generated by algorithms. Other countries like China itself observe this evolution with concern and warn of the risk that automated systems end up directly influencing life or death decisions on the battlefield, associating the scenario with the closest thing to the “Terminator algorithm” due to the unequivocal way in which all paths approach James Cameron’s fantastic proposal. A new accelerated war. If you will also, what is emerging is not just a new military technology, but rather a new time of the war. AI makes it possible to process information on a massive scale, identify targets more quickly, and execute attacks with unprecedented simultaneity. This means that military campaigns can develop at a pace that overflows the models traditional planning. From this perspective, war no longer advances solely at the pace of logistics or firepower, but at the pace of algorithms capable of interpreting the battlefield in real time. And in this unprecedented scenario, strategic advantage could increasingly depend on who is able to think (or calculate) faster than the adversary. Although neither of them be human. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine In Xataka | China has just found a hole in the US’s quietest weapon: an algorithm has hacked its B-2s in Iran In Xataka | The great paradox of war: the US ignored Ukraine’s pleas to Russia and now needs it in Iran