LUCAS Drone: Who Makes It, What It Costs and How Far It Flies

LUCAS is a small, propeller-driven delta-wing drone that flies to a target and explodes on impact. It is about 10 feet long with a wingspan of about 8 feet, and a piston engine at the rear drives a pusher propeller, the same layout as the Iranian Shahed.

Unlike a reconnaissance drone, it is not meant to come back. SpektreWorks presented it as modular, with parts that can be swapped for attack, reconnaissance or communications missions. Central Command says it can be launched from a catapult, with a small rocket booster, or from mobile ground vehicles, and U.S. officials describe it as having autonomy, anti-jamming and swarming features.

SpektreWorks, an Arizona drone maker, builds LUCAS. The company already produced the FLM-136, a Shahed look-alike target drone that U.S. forces use to practise shooting down Iranian-style drones, and LUCAS is in effect an armed version of that design.

SpektreWorks showed LUCAS in the Pentagon courtyard on July 16, 2025, as one of 18 American-made drone prototypes that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reviewed. The government owns the design, and a Pentagon official, Col. Nicholas Law, said it was meant to go to several manufacturers so it can be built in large numbers. In 2025 the Army placed a follow-on production order with SpektreWorks worth about $30 million.

The software is being upgraded too. On May 19, 2026, the defense company Shield AI said the Pentagon had chosen its Hivemind autonomy software to fly LUCAS, so that a single operator can direct a group of the drones working together.

About $35,000 each, according to U.S. Central Command, which gave that figure when it set up its LUCAS unit in December 2025. Estimates published since then run from about $10,000 to $55,000 a drone, and no unit price has appeared in a public contract notice.

That price is the point. A Tomahawk cruise missile, the Navy’s standard long-range strike weapon, costs roughly $2 million to $3.6 million, as our explainer on the U.S. Tomahawk stockpile sets out. Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, made the reverse argument about Iran’s drones on March 5, 2026: “we’re shooting down a $50,000 drone with a $2 million missile.”

The Pentagon has not published an official range or speed for LUCAS. The figure most often given for it is about 500 miles, or roughly 800 kilometers.

The target drone it is based on gives a guide. Published specifications give the FLM-136 a range of more than 650 kilometers (about 400 miles), a cruising speed of about 137 km/h (85 mph), a top speed of about 194 km/h (120 mph), up to six hours in the air and a maximum weight of about 180 pounds, driven by a 215 cc piston engine.

That makes LUCAS a shorter-range weapon than the Iranian original. A Shahed-136 flies roughly 1,000 to 2,500 kilometers, as our Shahed cost and range explainer shows. LUCAS does not need that reach to strike Iran from bases and ships across the Gulf.

There is no official count, and the stock started small. Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, said on March 17, 2026, that the inventory was “in the dozens,” not in the tens of thousands, because the drone was not yet in full-rate production. “We shipped what we had,” he said of the drones sent to Central Command.

LUCAS sits inside the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program, which aims to buy cheap uncrewed systems in very large numbers. Neither the Pentagon nor the Army has said how many LUCAS drones it plans to buy.

Yes. Central Command said its Task Force Scorpion Strike used one-way attack drones in combat for the first time in the opening strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026. The task force had been set up on December 3, 2025, as the military’s first one-way attack drone squadron in the Middle East, staffed mainly by special operations personnel.

On December 16, 2025, the littoral combat ship USS Santa Barbara launched a LUCAS from its flight deck in the Arabian Gulf, the first time the U.S. Navy had fired a one-way attack drone from a ship at sea. Asked on March 5, 2026, how well the drones had worked, Admiral Cooper answered with one word: “indispensable.” Asked what they had hit, he said: “Good ones.”

In August 2026 Central Command formed Task Force Falcon Strike, a multinational unit for one-way attack drones in the air, on the sea and under it. The only claimed loss so far comes from Iran: its army said on October 25 that it downed a LUCAS over Bandar Abbas. The U.S. has not confirmed it, and our Lavan Island report sets Iran’s recent mine claims against what has been confirmed.

It is a copy built for a different job, not a clear improvement. Admiral Cooper described where it came from on March 5: “We captured it, pulled the guts out, sent it back to America, put a little ‘Made in America’ on it.”

The two drones share their shape and engine layout. The Shahed-136 costs roughly $20,000 to $50,000 to build and flies 1,000 to 2,500 kilometers; LUCAS costs about $35,000 and is credited with 400 to 500 miles. Where LUCAS differs is in the add-ons U.S. officials stress: swappable payloads, anti-jamming and swarm software.

The U.S. Army now plans to use it beyond the Middle East. Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington, who leads the 7th Infantry Division, said in October 2026 that long-range one-way attack drones are now part of training at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He described using them to disable enemy warships at low cost while saving expensive missiles for targets that need them, and Army commanders in Europe have named mobile missile launchers as targets for long-range drones. That puts LUCAS at the center of a wider shift in drone warfare.

LUCAS stands for Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System. SpektreWorks of Arizona builds it from its FLM-136 target drone, a copy of Iran’s Shahed-136. U.S. Central Command puts the cost at about $35,000 per drone. The drone is about 10 feet long with an 8-foot wingspan. It was first shown at the Pentagon on July 16, 2025. Task Force Scorpion Strike, its first operating unit, was set up on December 3, 2025. It was first used in combat against Iran on February 28, 2026. In March 2026 the Pentagon’s chief technology officer put the stock “in the dozens.”