The U.S. LUCAS Rivals Iran's Shahed || Mar. 4, 2026
The U.S. has a drone that punches in the same (financial) weight class as the Iranian Shahed. Everybody, meet LUCAS.
With a range of ~500 miles, a price tag around $45,000, and modular capabilities, this is the U.S. military's first step towards scalable and affordable drone warfare. This is still in early phases of production, but plans are in place to ramp that up by 2027.
These systems have already been used to strike Iranian targets, but the extent of the damage is unclear. LUCAS might not shift the trajectory of this war, but with widespread deployment over the next few years, the math of modern warfare could shift drastically.
Comments (28)
Great to see the M.I.C. playing with new toys while we struggle with paying bills.
Frightening to see weapons of war headed towards being cheap and easy to produce. Would assume they means more proliferation and constant low grade wars.
Arsenal ships the size of a destroyer with 1,000 Tomahawks? That's one big Ka-Boom waiting to happen. Would it be autonomous? How many? If the enemy sinks or incapacitates one, that's 1,000 warheads that don't go on foreheads.
Missile barges have been around since the 90s and the capability for Aegis equipped ships to run file control for any US capable missile has been available since then as well. The floating batteries are not powder kegs and only explosive when armed - in order to change that the direct hit on the weapons cache would need to be huge and mostly impractical especially since some of these are actually submerged and simply surface for controlled operations.
Ver sad to see the US sort of copying other nations weaponry the US used to be the most innovative in defense systems, however, I am glad that this step was finally taken and hopefully we would see modernization of the whole military and defense technologies
The DOD shouldn't be ashamed at all to copy or take inspiration from Iran, Ukraine or Russia in the rapid development and deployment of a relatively low-cost, easy to manufacture weapon system. The shame is that DOD apparently didn't do this even earlier (or at least roll it out for kinetic deployment) after the Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Better late than never I say.
With these new drones are the ICBM's Archive candidates?
Ukraine is the masters of the drone.
LUCAS is a copy of the Shahed which is a copy of the Israeli Harpy which is a copy of the US-German DAR. How innovative!
See the U.S. can "hope" defense production scales higher. But after CMMC 2.0, they basically are destroying the bottom half of the DIB. Thousands of small manufacturers/proposal writers/etc are being forced to get a third party certificate worth 30-50k+ in order to make parts for larger companies or the gov as a whole. Only 100 companies can certify these manufacturers but the process can take up to 6 months per company.
Why haven't we destroyed the Iranian drone mfg facilities? This seems like an obvious target. While this is secondary to immediate threats like missile silos or batteries or naval vessels it seems like we should be able to take all of these assets off the table fairly quickly if we own the airspace.
Seems like it but these Drones can be launched from anywhere by anyone, once co-ordinates are entered. You would have to flatten all of Iran. Or with our Ukrainian brothers actually provided multi layer defense to our people, bases and the Allies paying for Trump for this war. Instead our country has chosen to screw the pooch in historic scale. Careers, if we survive this, are gonna be made detailing this specific mistake by Trump Administration and the failure of each of us to stop them. Hormuz won't open in time to not wreck everything. Hang tight, take notes, it's gonna be wild !
$30k each. What a bargain.
Hey Peter, What percentage of the parts for Lucas drone are made in China?
Incredibly interesting. Thanks for sharing, Peter!
"and BLAM'BLAM'BLAM'BLAM'BLAM'BLAM'BLAM!!!! ... 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥 ... 🤪 That was My Favourite part ... 😺 ... 👁️May🐝 Spun a little differently ... than most ... May🐝 ...???... 💁 buWudzRongWidat ...???... 🤗 Thank you Peter. 😁 Cheers ... 😼
How much time you spend on that😂
Hmmm. Drones? What we need are battleships! Electromagnetic catapults? Gimme steam! And get those ugly carriers a makeover. Bully!
What took the US so long to copy the Shahed
Uhhhh well, LUCAS has been around, think of this as its Quinceañera or Debutante Ball.
Can we get an update on the shipping insurance? Lots of moving pieces between the UK and US.
There is no update. The US says it will provide insurance and escort tankers. Thr French are talking about protecting shipping too. So right now just talk give it a few weeks to see any of that become reality
Send them by the thousands to Ukraine
Sure just get China to manufacture them
Now if we only had manufacturing in the United States to produce the parts and manufacture the drones in scalable production
Peter says in the video that the US should be able to by next year. I dont think its as big of a deal as your making it to be
…can Lucas deliver Whataburger? Hey, speaking of Whataburger… can you scoop ya boy up some while you’re in Texas? I understand they are currently free and being bought with tax payer money, but my news might be old.
How sophisticated do the chips need to be and how are they going to fit into the already blushing demand for chips?