Pentagon reveals Grok AI used in Iran missile strikes in court filing
The U.S. Pentagon revealed in a June 2026 court filing that xAI's Grok AI system, specifically a derivative called Grok Gov Model, was deployed in Project Maven to assist in targeting decisions that resulted in over 2,000 munitions being deployed on 2,000 distinct targets in 96 hours during military operations against Iran. The government disclosed this information while defending xAI against a pollution lawsuit, arguing that disrupting the company's data center infrastructure would threaten national security.
What happened
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a court memorandum on June 15, 2026, revealing that Grok, an AI model developed by xAI, was used in military strikes against Iran.
Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon's AI chief, testified under oath that a derivative tool called 'Grok Gov Model' is deployed within Project Maven, the military's AI-assisted targeting program. Stanley stated that Maven processes enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions on 2,000 distinct targets in 96 hours during the war against Iran.
The government disclosed this information in response to a lawsuit filed by the NAACP against xAI over unlicensed turbines operating at a data center near Memphis that power the Colossus 2 supercomputer used to train Grok.
Reported impact
Stanley testified that Maven users consume approximately 2 billion tokens per day, equivalent to up to 6 million pages processed, making xAI's computing infrastructure indispensable according to the Pentagon official.
Index analysis
The Pentagon argued that the pollution lawsuit 'threatens the national, economic and energy security' of the United States by risking disruption to AI infrastructure now used by the military.
Project Maven previously relied on Anthropic's Claude model but the government ended contracts with Anthropic in late February after the company refused to allow use of its outputs for certain military purposes.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.