U.S. Central Command Deploys First Operational LUCAS Drone Unit for Potential Iran Strikes.

U.S. Central Command has placed Task Force Scorpion Strike in operational status, fielding the low-cost LUCAS one-way attack drone for potential use in the Middle East. The move signals a shift toward scalable, expendable strike systems designed to overwhelm defenses and stretch adversary air defense inventories in a possible Iran contingency.

U.S. Central Command has moved Task Force Scorpion Strike into an operational posture, giving deployed forces a low-cost one-way attack drone capability designed to multiply strike capacity, absorb attrition, and overwhelm defenses through massed, distributed effects. Beyond adding another munition to the inventory, it effectively creates a new layer of “magazine depth” that can be launched quickly from dispersed sites, complicating enemy targeting and imposing unfavorable cost trades on air defenses. The shift matters less for a single drone’s performance than for what it signals: the U.S. military is now treating expendable systems as a scalable combat arm, not a niche experiment, at a moment when Iran contingencies and Red Sea-Gulf maritime threats are driving a broader regional buildup.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

LUCAS is a low-cost, expendable one-way attack drone designed for massed "swarm" strikes, carrying roughly a 40-lb class warhead to hit soft and semi-hardened targets at extended standoff range, launched from mobile ground systems or ship decks to saturate enemy air defenses and overwhelm dispersed targets (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The Pentagon’s first dedicated “kamikaze drone” unit, known as Task Force Scorpion and evolved from an experimental effort, is now ready to participate if the U.S. President orders strikes on Iran, with U.S. Central Command confirming the unit is prepared for operations. The operational milestone comes with unusual speed: the task force and its first one-way attack squadron were publicly announced in early December 2025, and the unit is being described as ready less than three months later, a tempo that reflects wartime-driven acquisition habits rather than the traditional U.S. requirements pipeline.

At the center of the squadron is the Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, produced by Arizona-based SpektreWorks and priced at roughly $35,000 per drone. Officials have emphasized “extensive range” and autonomous operation, while also highlighting launch flexibility: LUCAS can be fired via catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff, and mobile ground or vehicle systems, reducing dependence on runways and enabling dispersed basing that is harder to target. This is not a boutique capability. It is designed to be consumed in quantity and replenished quickly, trading exquisite survivability for volume, reach, and persistent pressure.

The technical picture becomes clearer when paired with what the U.S. has acknowledged about the drone’s lineage. LUCAS is widely described as reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed-136 class of one-way attack drones, a design family built around a simple delta-wing airframe, pusher propeller propulsion, and pre-programmed navigation that favors affordability and mass. A small organizational footprint and network-centric strike integration suggest the LUCAS is intended for swarm tactics and distributed employment, not standalone precision strikes.

SpektreWorks’ published specifications for its FLM 136 “authentic threat emulation” platform, which mirrors Shahed-like characteristics, provide a useful reference point for performance even if the U.S. operational configuration may differ. The FLM 136 is listed with a 444 nautical mile range, six-hour endurance, a cruise speed of approximately 74 knots, a dash speed near 105 knots, and a maximum payload of 40 pounds, with an 8.2-foot wingspan and 9.8-foot length. Public reporting has indicated a similar 40-pound payload class for LUCAS, underscoring that the U.S. operational configuration is optimized for soft and semi-hardened targets rather than deeply fortified infrastructure.

The drone has already been demonstrated at sea. A LUCAS was launched from the flight deck of an Independence-class littoral combat ship in the Arabian Gulf, marking a first-at-sea employment milestone and validating shipboard expeditionary launch concepts for one-way attack drones. That matters in the Central Command theater because it lets commanders reposition strike capacity without building additional land infrastructure, while also allowing drones to originate from unpredictable azimuths that complicate Iranian defensive planning around the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman approaches.

A 40-pound class payload and an attritable airframe point to a mission set focused on distributed target arrays: mobile launchers, air defense components, radar sites, logistics nodes, boat concentrations, ammunition storage, and production or support facilities that can be suppressed through repetition and simultaneity rather than single-shot overmatch. The drones are not designed to destroy hardened underground facilities. Instead, they are intended to saturate defenses, consume interceptors, and exploit seams in integrated air defense systems by attacking from multiple vectors at once.

This approach is a direct outgrowth of lessons learned in Ukraine, where the defining innovation has not been a single “silver bullet” drone but the operationalization of cheap strike systems in volumes that force a defender into cost-imposing dilemmas. The Shahed-136 family demonstrated how relatively small warheads, when paired with low unit cost, swarm employment, and persistent replenishment, can make air defense a grinding inventory contest. In that logic, success is measured not by the invulnerability of each drone but by the fraction that penetrates and the cumulative disruption inflicted on infrastructure, logistics, and command nodes.

For the U.S. Army and joint force, the creation of an operational one-way attack squadron under Central Command is an institutional inflection point. Even if the task force is led by special operations personnel, it accelerates joint doctrine and sustainment for expendable strike at scale: planning deconfliction with manned aviation, managing airspace in dense corridors, cueing targets with multi-intelligence ISR, and building the industrial base required when hundreds of drones, not dozens of cruise missiles, become the consumable. It also reinforces a broader pivot away from relying exclusively on multi-million dollar assets for every strike need, a shift increasingly shaped by high-attrition, swarm-driven conflicts.

In an Iran scenario, range and basing geometry will define employment options. A 400-plus nautical mile class range would allow coverage from Gulf waters and regional bases into large portions of southern and western Iran, including coastal missile batteries, naval infrastructure, and interior logistics corridors that support anti-ship and ballistic missile operations. If extended-range variants approach the upper bounds associated with Shahed-class systems in open-source assessments, commanders gain greater operational depth for striking dispersed support nodes and air defense elements that enable Iran’s missile forces, even if the warhead size still constrains effectiveness against deeply hardened sites.

The strategic value lies in the ability to generate many simultaneous, geographically separated attacks that can probe, distract, and degrade defenses ahead of or alongside higher-end strikes. LUCAS offers a way to thin out radar coverage, draw out surface-to-air missiles, and force Iranian air defenses to reveal positions before more expensive standoff weapons or manned aircraft enter contested airspace.

Can the United States sustain a production-and-training cycle that matches the tempo of attrition warfare? The rapid timeline from announcement to operational readiness suggests the Pentagon is beginning to accept that mass is itself a capability. If Task Force Scorpion Strike proves it can field, coordinate, and replenish large numbers of low-cost drones in theater, it will validate a playbook first observed in Ukraine and now being institutionalized in the Middle East.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.