Overview
- Iran’s IRGC and Army said their air defenses downed multiple U.S.-made LUCAS drones and a U.S. MQ-9 over sites including Qeshm Island, Bandar Abbas, Minab, and Isfahan, and they also claimed a cruise missile intercept.
- CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper called LUCAS indispensable in the Iran campaign, and the U.S. stood up a dedicated LUCAS squadron under the Scorpion Strike task force after Navy ship-launch tests in December.
- LUCAS, built by Arizona-based SpektreWorks after reverse-engineering Iran’s Shahed design, is a one-way attack drone that costs about $35,000, carries up to 18 kilograms of explosives, and can travel roughly 650 kilometers.
- Reporting says LUCAS has struck Iranian military and drone-production sites, and some U.S. officials credit those hits with reducing Iranian drone activity early in the war, though battlefield effects remain hard to verify.
- Analysts tied footage from a Lamerd strike to the new U.S. Precision Strike Missile, but CENTCOM denied using PrSM there, as the high-tempo drone and missile exchanges also push demand for counter-drone tools like Raytheon’s Coyote and Anduril’s Roadrunner.