The United States began using in the war against Iran a new low-cost attack drone developed from Iranian technology. According to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, the FLM-136 “Lucas” was created by the U.S. Army itself based on reverse engineering of a Shahed, the kamikaze drone manufactured by Iran and widely used by Russia in Ukraine.
According to the WSJ, Lucas entered battlefield service in less than two years, breaking the Pentagon’s traditional pattern of betting on very expensive systems with slow development.
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The drone has a range of about 800 km, a six-hour endurance, and costs between $10,000 and $55,000 per unit, well below the Tomahawk cruise missiles, which cost at least $2 million each.
The WSJ reports that the project is part of a broader U.S. strategy to ensure cheap and abundant munitions in high-intensity conflicts, such as a possible confrontation with China.
Defense officials interviewed by the newspaper say that Lucas has already been used in attacks on Iranian military facilities, including drone factories and air defense points.
One former Defense Department official described the equipment as “the Toyota Corolla of drones”: simple, robust, and made to be produced at scale.
Because the U.S. government holds the Lucas intellectual property, the Pentagon is distributing production among different manufacturers, with a planned capacity of hundreds of units per month.
The Marine Corps ordered about 6,000 drones, initially aimed at the Indo-Pacific, but part of the batch was diverted to the Middle East.
Experts consulted by the newspaper, however, warn that Lucas’s performance in more complex environments, with heavy electronic warfare and GPS jamming, remains uncertain.
They also highlight the lack of cheap anti-drone defense systems in the United States, which allows Iran-backed militias to keep using small drones against American bases.
