The Dispatch
The Precision Strike Missile designated PrSM completed prototype testing in 2025 and entered combat on the first day of the military operation in Iran, February 28, 2026. Its first confirmed strike hit a sports hall and adjacent elementary school in Lamerd, a city in southern Iran. At least 21 people were killed, including two schoolgirls aged 10 and 11 and their volleyball coach. The New York Times, working with munitions experts, verified the weapon’s distinctive silhouette in flight footage, its mid-air fireball detonation, and the pattern of tungsten pellet fragmentation damage across the school grounds and surrounding residential area. A United States official confirmed to the Times that the missile used was the PrSM. The missile is designed to detonate above its target and blast small tungsten pellets outward. The playground was peppered with fragmentation holes. The weapon performed as designed.
An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compound is situated next to the sports hall. It appears to have been the intended target of the attack, though it is unclear whether it was damaged. According to archival satellite imagery reviewed by the Times, the school and sports hall have been separated from the IRGC compound by a wall for at least fifteen years. The school was publicly identified as a civilian facility on Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Wikimapia at the time of the strike. The wall is still there.
CENTCOM’s response to reports of the strike was as follows: “We’re aware of the reports and are looking into them. U.S. forces do not indiscriminately target civilians, unlike the Iranian regime.” This was also the day a Tomahawk cruise missile struck a school in Minab, several hundred miles away, killing 175 people. Two schools on the first day of the military operation. One struck by a cruise missile. The other by a weapon so new the military was publicly celebrating its combat debut in the days that followed. Whether the Lamerd strike was a targeting failure, a design flaw, or deliberate, CENTCOM is looking into it.
The AI targeting system that nominated locations for the opening strikes of the military operation is called Maven Smart System. It was built by Palantir Technologies under a contract valued at 1.3 billion dollars. It fuses satellite imagery, drone feeds, radar data and signals intelligence into a single interface, compressing the process of identifying, approving and striking a target from hours into seconds. Maven was being investigated for its possible role in the school strike in Minab. Following this investigation, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg signed a memo designating Maven an official Pentagon program of record, mandating its adoption across every branch of the United States military by September 2026. The contract ceiling was not reduced. Palantir’s stock has approximately doubled in the past year. The children’s volleyball team did not have a contract ceiling.
Source Block
Primary sources:
- New York Times — PrSM Lamerd strike investigation (via Oman Observer): https://www.omanobserver.om/article/1186950/world/region/missile-hit-iranian-sports-hall-and-school-nyt
- Marine Corps Times — Palantir Maven and school strikes: https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-military/2026/03/24/deadly-iran-school-strike-casts-shadow-over-pentagons-ai-targeting-push/
- Reuters / Technology.org — Maven program of record designation: https://www.technology.org/2026/03/23/pentagon-makes-palantirs-maven-ai-an-official-core-military-system/
- @MarioNawfal tweet thread number 2(screenshots on file)
Screenshots on file:
- screenshots/prsm-lamerd-school-screenshot.png
- screenshots/palantir-ai-school-screenshot.png
Archived copies:
