From The War Zone, February 28:
U.S. Military Has Used Long-Range Kamikaze Drones In Combat For The First Time
America's clone of Iran's Shahed-136 had been used against Iran in an ironic vignette of modern drone warfare.
The U.S. has used LUCAS kamikaze drones for the first time in combat, U.S. Central Command acknowledged on Saturday. The drones, based on the Iranian Shahed-136, were launched from the ground by Task Force Scorpion Strike (TFSS). The task force was set up in December “to flip the script on Iran,” a U.S. official told us at the time. The launch of LUCAS drones marks a rare instance when the U.S. adopted Iran’s drone playbook and used it against them.
Today’s strikes were part of Operation Epic Fury, an attack the U.S. launched along with Israel on targets across Iran. You can read more about that in our initial story here.
The War Zone has advocated for the procurement of this exact class of drone by the American military.
The LUCAS drones are designed to be a far less expensive strike weapon than missiles, which not only cost more, but are far more difficult and time-consuming to produce.
“Costing approximately $35,000 per platform, LUCAS is a low-cost, scalable system that provides cutting-edge capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional long-range U.S. systems that can deliver similar effects,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, told TWZ back in December. “The drone system has an extensive range and the ability to operate beyond line of sight, providing significant capability across CENTCOM’s vast operating area.”
In addition, the LUCAS design includes features that allow for “autonomous coordination, making them suitable for swarm tactics and network-centric strikes,” a U.S. official told us. As we have explained in detail in the past, the swarming capabilities combined with some of the drones being equipped with Starlink terminals, means extremely advanced cooperative tactics and dynamic targeting are possible, all while keeping humans in the loop....
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