The Marines are sponsoring a test of the LUCAS drones at the U.S. Army\u2019s Yuma Proving Ground (YPG),\u00a0the Army stated<\/a>. The move comes as the Corps is working to\u00a0increase its own one-way attack drone capabilities<\/a>\u00a0and the Pentagon is\u00a0pushing for more drone use<\/a>\u00a0across the military in the wake of their\u00a0ubiquity in the Ukraine war<\/a>. The Pentagon is hoping that the LUCAS drones can be quickly and cheaply built and delivered at scale.<\/p>\n \u201cHarkening back to the Liberty Ship production model that rapidly produced thousands of cargo ships during World War II, testers hope that the LUCAS will eventually serve a similar function in the new era of warfare,\u201d Col. Nicholas Law, Director of Experimentation in the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research & Engineering,\u00a0said in a release<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not a single manufacturer: it\u2019s designed to go to multiple manufacturers to be built in mass quantities.\u201d<\/p>\n We laid out this exact concept months ago, along with our in-depth case for rushing mass production of American Shahed-136 copies,\u00a0that you can read in full here.<\/a><\/p>\n Law envisions these drones as ultimately able to be used on dynamic targets, such as vehicles on the move or targets of interest that the drones find themselves with a degree of autonomy.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce we start weaponization and automated target recognition, we can have a target that is a representation of a real target,\u201d he explained.\u00a0Law didn\u2019t provide any specifics, and we have reached out to the Army and Marines for more information.<\/p>\n You can read our deep dive on how artificial intelligence will revolutionize lower-end drones like LUCAS in exactly this way in our special feature linked\u00a0here<\/a>. But the fact that LUCAS\u00a0can be equipped with a satellite datalink<\/a>\u00a0means that it could hunt for and find targets of interest over great distances all on its own, while still allowing a human operator to approve a strike.<\/p>\n In addition to strikes, LUCAS drones equipped with nose-mounted gimbal cameras can also be deployed to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). With an estimated price tag for the platform itself of about $35,000, these LUCAS variants could provide an affordable, attritable platform for ISR. The LUCAS drones we have seen also have swarming capabilities \u2014 the ability to work cooperatively as a team \u2014 which can make them especially effective at attack operations and acting as decoys to confuse enemy air defenses.<\/p>\n The one detail Law provided about the drones being tested at YPG is that they are not yet equipped with warheads.<\/p>\n \u201cThe warhead that will eventually be integrated into LUCAS isn\u2019t constructed yet, but it will also be low-cost and mass produced by multiple manufacturers,\u201d Law posited. \u201cEvaluators are currently testing LUCAS with inert payloads.\u201d<\/p>\n CENTCOM declined comment on whether its LUCAS drones currently deployed have kinetic payloads and referred us to\u00a0statements previously made\u00a0<\/a>that they have been deployed as one-way attack drones. It\u2019s possible that they feature more improvised, less powerful warheads at this time. They can also just fly into their targets to damage them \u2014\u00a0especially fragile ones like radar arrays.<\/p>\n As we noted in\u00a0our original piece on the topic<\/a>, CENTCOM stood up Task Force Scorpion Strike (TFSS), the military\u2019s first one-way attack drone squadron, to operate the LUCAS drones. Roughly 10 feet long with a wingspan of eight feet, was developed by Arizona-based\u00a0SpektreWorks<\/a>\u00a0in cooperation with the U.S. military primarily as a target drone to emulate a Shahed-136-like threat, but also as a weapon in its own right.<\/p>\n There are, however, other companies involved in providing LUCAS variants. For instance,\u00a0Griffon Aerospace<\/a>\u00a0has been pitching a Shahed-like drone called the MQM-172 Arrowhead to America\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n The company, which is building the air frames, has already provided them to the Pentagon for use as both strike weapons and targets, Griffon spokesman Dan Beck told us Wednesday. However, it is unclear whether they have been fitted with kinetic payloads or how widespread their testing and use is across the military. We have reached out to the Pentagon to learn more.<\/p>\n Beck said\u00a0Kraken Kinetics<\/a>\u00a0is providing the payload for these LUCAS variants. We\u2019ve reached out to them as well.<\/p>\n While Beck declined to provide many details of his company\u2019s work with the Pentagon, he did offer us some insights about the Arrowhead\u2019s specifications.<\/p>\n Considered a long-range LUCAS version, the Arrowhead can carry a payload of up to 100 pounds as far as 1,500 nautical miles, Beck told us. That\u2019s akin to the\u00a0Shahed-136 drones produced by Iran<\/a>\u00a0and modified by Russia for its use against Ukraine. The current LUCAS models deployed to the Middle East are smaller and have significantly less endurance and about half the payload capacity.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/9417772_a92041.jpg\")
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