Pentagon confirms first combat use of reverse-engineered, Iran-style drones during joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Tehran.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The United States military has launched low-cost, one-way attack drones for the first time in combat during its ongoing air campaign against Iran, marking a new phase in what the Pentagon has designated as Operation Epic Fury.
The joint U.S.-Israeli operation began early Saturday with coordinated strikes on Tehran, resulting in the death of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, according to a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump. The operation also targeted Iranian military infrastructure.
In a press release announcing the operation, U.S. Central Command confirmed the combat debut of the new drone system.
“The first hours of the operation included precision munitions launched from air, land, and sea,” CENTCOM stated. “Additionally, CENTCOM’s Task Force Scorpion Strike employed low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat.”
CENTCOM later said in a statement on X that the low-cost drones, modeled after Iran’s Shahed platforms, are now “delivering American-made retribution.”
The development follows a July memorandum issued by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth titled “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance,” which outlined a strategy to accelerate deployment of small, lethal unmanned systems across U.S. forces.
“Drones are the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation, accounting for most of this year’s casualties in Ukraine. Our adversaries collectively produce millions of cheap drones each year,” Hegseth wrote in the memo. “While global military drone production skyrocketed over the last three years, the previous administration deployed red tape. U.S. units are not outfitted with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires.”
According to reporting by Military Times, the platform used in the Iran strikes is the Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a one-way drone reverse-engineered from the Iranian Shahed-136 design. The outlet reported that the drones are built by Arizona-based SpektreWorks and can be launched via catapults, rocket-assisted takeoffs, or mobile ground systems.
The LUCAS platform reportedly weighs approximately 180 pounds—significantly lighter than its Iranian counterpart—and costs an estimated $35,000 per unit.
Defense officials have described the system as a scalable, affordable alternative to high-cost precision munitions, allowing U.S. forces to conduct sustained operations without relying exclusively on traditional missile inventories.
The Pentagon has not disclosed the total number of drones deployed in the initial phase of Operation Epic Fury, but officials confirmed that their use was integrated alongside air, land, and sea-launched precision weapons in the opening hours of the campaign.