Wars often serve as laboratories for testing new weapons. However, the Iran War is unique in that the US used an untested weapon system on the very first day.
In fact, the US might have fired an untested ballistic missile at Iran in its first salvo of strikes on February 28, and rather than hitting a military target, the precision-guided missile obliterated an Iranian school.
According to reports, the US fired a short-range ballistic missile called the Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, previously untested in combat, and it struck a sports hall and an adjacent elementary school near a military facility in southern Iran. Local officials cited in Iranian media said this strike and others nearby in the city of Lamerd killed at least 21 people.
On the same day, a US Tomahawk cruise missile also struck a primary girls’ school in Minab, Iran, killing at least 175 students.
However, the strike on the sports hall and the adjacent elementary school involved a weapon that had never been tested in combat before, the PrSM, according to a report by The New York Times.
Notably, while it was known that the US had used PrSMs in the Iran War, this is the first time that the missile has been associated with the strike on the sports hall and school in Lamred.
On March 3, CENTCOM released a video that suggested that the U.S. Army’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) may have seen its combat debut against Iranian targets, though there was no official confirmation.
The CENTCOM video showed a HIMARS launching a missile that appeared to be the PrSM, a next-generation missile developed by Lockheed Martin to replace the ATACMS.
Then, on March 4, CENTCOM released another video from Operation Epic Fury, showing the PrSMs in action.
More importantly, this time CENTCOM confirmed that the US Army had indeed used the PrSMs in the Iran War.
CENTCOM stated in an X post, “In a historic first, long-range Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs) were used in combat during Operation Epic Fury, providing an unrivaled deep strike capability.”
The Iran War also marked the combat debut of LUCAS (Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System) one-way drones, a clone of Iranian Shahed-136 drones.
However, the debut of PrSMs stood out as the US might have used them in its opening salvo of strikes on February 28 itself.
The NYT verified videos of two strikes in Lamerd, as well as footage of the attacks’ aftermath. Munitions experts found that the weapon features, explosions, and damage are consistent with PrSM, which is designed to detonate just above its target and blast small tungsten pellets outward.
Videos that capture a single strike in a residential area about 900 feet from the sports hall and school show the weapon in flight, with a distinctive silhouette matching the PrSM. The missile erupts in a large fireball midair.
Another video, filmed from a security camera directly across from the sports hall, shows the strike on the hall and the adjacent school. While the video does not capture an incoming missile, it clearly shows an explosion just above the structure.
Photos of the aftermath show that both sites were pockmarked with holes, apparently from the tungsten pellets, the report said.
“While we knew PrSM was fired, this is the first look we’ve gotten at the business end of the system,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College, said after reviewing videos and photos of the incident.
Lewis’s observation was supported by Frederic Gras, another munitions expert.
He said the video showing airburst detonation was very clear, and “the pattern of fragmentation damages is impressive and matches the few technical information available on the PrSM.”
Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said the sports hall was being used by a girls’ volleyball team when it was struck.
There is an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.) compound next to the sports hall; however, according to archival satellite imagery, the sports hall, school, and the IRGC compound have been walled off from the compound for at least 15 years.
The sports hall has also, for years, been publicly identified as a civilian-use facility on widely available digital mapping platforms, including Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Wikimapia, according to an NYT review.
The report did not conclude whether the strike was intentional, the result of improper targeting, or a design flaw attributable to the weapons’ first appearance on the battlefield.
Notably, on the same day, the PrSM struck an elementary school in Lamerd, a US Tomahawk cruise missile also struck a girls’ primary school in Minab, Iran, killing 175 students.
Both these strikes could have resulted from improper or outdated targeting data. However, since it’s the first combat use of PrSM, there are apprehensions that the strike could also have resulted from a faulty missile guidance system.
Precision Strike Missile
The Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) is a surface-to-surface missile with all-weather, cluster-munition-compliant capability to strike critical and time-sensitive targets. It can engage targets at extended ranges in all weather conditions, exceeding the ATACMS missile’s maximum range of 300 kilometers.
It is designed to be compatible with HIMARS, a truck-mounted rocket artillery system, as well as the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). Each HIMARS can carry two PrSMs, doubling payload capacity.
While the HIMARS has already demonstrated its worth in combat areas such as Ukraine, where its precision strike and shoot-and-scoot capabilities have made it a highly valued system, the addition of the PrSM to this platform significantly enhances its strategic utility.
The PrSM has a range of up to 500 kilometers in its initial increments, with potential future versions expected to exceed 1,000 kilometers—a significant reach compared to existing systems, such as the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS), which has a range of approximately 70-150 kilometers.
This long-range missile features a modular, open-systems architecture, allowing for adaptability to various mission profiles, including those with high-explosive or penetrating warheads. It uses advanced guidance systems that guarantee high accuracy.
It is engineered to operate in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) environments.
The missile comes in two variants: Increment 1 and 2. The US Army currently uses primary Increment 1 variants of PrSMs, which carry a unitary high-explosive warhead. Although the missiles are precision-guided, they are solely meant to attack stationary targets.
The Increment 2 missiles are expected to feature a multi-mode seeker and the capability to engage moving targets. The present development focuses on this version for anti-ship applications, although it may also be applied to other target sets.
The PrSM builds on ATACMS’ legacy as a deadly missile, offering greater range and firepower.
PrSMs will ultimately replace the ATACMs currently being fired from the HIMARS launchers, significantly increasing their range from 300km (186 miles) to more than 500km (310 miles), without changing the vehicle carrying the missile.
PrSMs also offer double the “missile load” of ATACMs. While an HIMARS launcher can carry one ATACMS missile per pod, it can carry two PrSMs per pod.
Last year, the Australian Army fired its first Precision Strike Missile in collaboration with the U.S. Army as part of Exercise ‘Talisman Sabre 2025‘. The test provided a glimpse of PrSM’s long-range strike capability.
While damage assessments continue and CENTCOM has yet to confirm if it was responsible for the strike on the school in Lamerd, the deployment of the Precision Strike Missiles in Operation Epic Fury marks a major milestone for the U.S. Army’s long-range precision strike drive.
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