LUCAS Drone Proves Cheap Can Win: 'Great Success' in First Strike

Emil Michael spent years at Uber trying to build flying cars. Now he is running the Pentagon's technology shop, and the drone he helped put in the field just had its first combat deployment.

The Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System — LUCAS — is now confirmed deployed in Operation Epic Fury, the U.S.-led military campaign against Iran's nuclear and military infrastructure that began February 28. The drones are in limited quantities: "in the dozens, not tens of thousands," Michael told DefenseScoop at the McAleese Defense Programs conference this week. "We're not in full-rate production. So we shipped what we had."

The results, according to U.S. Central Command commander Admiral Brad Cooper: "great success."

That word matters. The Pentagon has spent two decades buying expensive, exquisite weapons systems in small quantities. LUCAS is a deliberate inversion of that logic — a cheap, simple, expendable attack drone designed to overwhelm air defenses through mass, not precision. The fact that it is working, even in small numbers, is significant.

The drone itself is a reverse-engineered Shahed-136. Iranian forces have used the Shahed design extensively against Israel and Ukraine, and the U.S. military obtained a copy — Michael described capturing one — and turned it into a domestic production program. SpektreWorks, an Arizona-based manufacturer, is the primary contractor. LUCAS carries a price tag of $55,000 or less per unit, has a range exceeding 400 nautical miles, and features an 8-foot wingspan with a modular design that allows anti-jamming and swarming capabilities.

The contrast with the weapons the U.S. has traditionally used against similar targets is stark. A single Tomahawk cruise missile costs roughly $1.5 million. A LUCAS costs less than $55,000. The question of whether mass-produced cheap drones can defeat modern air defenses is not theoretical anymore — Ukraine has been testing it against Russia for three years. Now the U.S. is running the same experiment in the Middle East.

Michael, who joined the Pentagon as CTO and undersecretary for research and engineering, has been explicit about the philosophy. The Drone Dominance Program — the acquisition vehicle through which LUCAS and similar systems are being purchased — is designed to move fast and buy large quantities. The program stood up quickly, ran a competition with 12 leading drone manufacturers last summer, and is now fielding hardware that was in development less than a year ago.

That speed has a cost. The current arsenal is measured in dozens, not the thousands that planners would want if this were the opening move of a larger campaign. Full-rate production is still in the future. But the operational commander is saying the weapons are working, which is more than the Pentagon usually gets to say in the early stages of a new weapons program.

Operation Epic Fury is, in one sense, a test. Iran has one of the largest and most diverse drone programs in the world. The U.S. response has included LUCAS alongside traditional precision weapons. Whether cheap, expendable attack drones prove decisive — or whether they complement rather than replace high-end systems — is a question that will outlast this conflict. But for now, the initial returns are positive.

"The great thing about this program is the operators love it," Michael said. That is not a phrase you often hear from the battlefield in the opening days of a new weapons system.