When the US launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28, 2026, it marked the fight debut of the U.S. army’s latest drone, the Low-Value Unmanned Fight Assault System. U.S. Central Command confirmed that the brand new LUCAS drones have been used within the strikes and has mentioned extra of them “stay prepared for employment” in Iran. The good irony, nonetheless, is that the LUCAS drone relies on Iran’s personal low-cost one-way assault drone, the Shahed-136. In Could 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly praised the Iranian drones as low-cost to supply, in addition to “superb … and quick and lethal.” And when the Pentagon launched the LUCAS in December, astute observers have been fast to note its similarities to the Shahed-136.
The concept that the United States, the world’s preeminent army energy, would copy Iranian expertise would have appeared fantastical just some years in the past. And but, the Shahed-136, after being bought to Russia to be used towards Ukraine, was captured and studied by the U.S. army, improved on and produced by a small firm in Arizona, and is now getting used towards Iranian targets. For its half, Tehran has unleashed a wave of Shahed-136 drones throughout the Center East as a part of its response to Washington’s Operation Epic Fury. The drones have struck buildings in Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, and even the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia. Though the dimensions of Tehran’s remaining stockpile of drones is unclear, their sweeping deployment has turn into a crucial ingredient of the Iranian technique for retaliation and proves that the character of conflict has modified.
Certainly, the US’s adversaries have a lot to show it on this new period. Though Washington nonetheless leads within the growth and deployment of refined capabilities, equivalent to fighter jets, tanks, and cruise missiles, Iran, Russia, and Ukraine are forward within the growth and deployment of low-cost, more and more autonomous drones for surveillance, in addition to for short-range and long-range strikes. Washington now acknowledges the necessity for these methods, however it has but to take the steps essential to manufacture them at scale. Moscow has a each day goal of manufacturing as much as 1,000 Geran-2 drones this 12 months. Washington may begin churning out related numbers of LUCAS drones in a matter of months, however provided that it makes the required coverage adjustments and investments. If the US is to stay dominant on this new army actuality, it might want to be taught from its historical past and adapt. In any other case—and that is particularly the case in a battle within the Indo-Pacific—refined and costly U.S. methods can be overwhelmed by cheaper munitions, with catastrophic penalties.
ATTACK OF THE DRONES
Washington’s curiosity in Iran’s Shahed-136 is uncommon and, in some respects, unprecedented. Though U.S. scientists have lengthy striven to amass adversaries’ army expertise—racing to recuperate the wrecks of Soviet plane, as an illustration, or buying Chinese language expertise from third events—the aim was to not copy it. Slightly, Washington usually acquired an adversary’s expertise to learn to defeat them. Over the past 80 years, there have been solely a handful of examples of the U.S. army developing and fielding its personal model of a international functionality. A uncommon occasion occurred within the early Seventies when the U.S. Military Mobility Tools Analysis and Improvement Command used pictures and sketches of a Soviet folding float bridge—a short lived system designed to allow the fast motion of troops, autos, and provides throughout rivers—to develop a comparable functionality. Within the following half century, there have been no comparable examples of Washington appropriating an adversary’s army capabilities. America was snug in its supremacy in strategies and technique of warfare, and didn’t really feel the necessity to copy what others have been doing.
That age of confidence has been ended by the comparative inferiority of U.S. long-range one-way assault weapons. The proof of this has turn into not possible to disregard. The Pentagon’s Switchblade 600 drone, for instance, was fast-tracked to Ukraine in 2022. It has a spread of lower than 60 miles and might price as a lot as $120,000 per unit. Even placing price apart, the Pentagon seen one-way assault weapons as short-range weapons, complementing artillery. When Iran debuted the Shahed-136 in 2022, in contrast, it got here with an estimated vary of 940–1,240 miles, a payload of 110–330 kilos, and a value per unit of round $35,000. Russia acquired the expertise from Iran virtually instantly for its conflict towards Ukraine. Since then, Moscow has despatched Shahed swarms to assault Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure with stunning frequency. By March 2024, Moscow was launching 130 drones per week; six months later, it was launching greater than 1,100 Shahed-type drones per week.
Within the age of exact mass—characterised by the widespread deployment of scalable, low-cost, precision weapons and sensors by state and nonstate actors, at each brief and lengthy ranges—the US not has a monopoly on inventing helpful army expertise. Slightly, warfare for small, technologically restricted actors is now achievable and repeatable as by no means earlier than, as helpful army capabilities could be simply and inexpensively produced. For many years, the US developed progressive army applied sciences, together with precision-strike capabilities, that price billions of {dollars} and took a few years to supply. There’s nonetheless a job for these weapons. However now the U.S. army should additionally develop cheap weapons and produce them at scale—quick. The truth that a U.S. knockoff of an Iranian weapon is the exemplar of the Trump administration’s “drone dominance program,” promoted by the Pentagon on social media, reveals how a lot the world has modified.
A BRAVE NEW WORLD
As Washington has slowly awoken to the significance of exact mass, it has additionally begun to acknowledge the risks of the prolonged time frames required to discipline legacy army capabilities. After a long time of neglect, the protection industrial base is beginning to see new investments and market entrants in addition to makes an attempt at acquisition reform. LUCAS, as an illustration, moved from idea to operational readiness in roughly 18 months—a fraction of the sluggish common six-year acquisition cycle. However there may be extra that have to be achieved. Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth has adopted his predecessors in warning Congress that the protection industrial base is “strained, overly consolidated, and liable to not protecting tempo with fashionable and near-peer threats, particularly in a protracted battle.” Washington, he mentioned, has “misplaced capability and resilience in our protection provide chain.”
The Pentagon’s long-standing choice for solely counting on refined, costly, “beautiful” methods stays an issue since there is no such thing as a short-term path to dramatically rising their manufacturing. The timelines for these methods, together with the Lengthy-Vary Anti-Ship Missile, the F-35, the Tomahawk, and the B-21 bomber, are essentially prolonged, linked to the complexity of the platforms and workforce challenges, notably the variety of employees with safety clearances. The F-35 program, for instance, was begun within the mid-Nineteen Nineties and reached full manufacturing in 2021. These capabilities are indispensable—particularly in a possible Indo-Pacific battle—however they’re additionally costly, produced in restricted numbers, and sluggish to replenish. In a sustained combat, an arsenal of multimillion-dollar missiles could possibly be depleted in weeks and take years to restock. Exact mass is required to plug the hole.
This problem could be seen within the ongoing Iranian battle. The Pentagon has reportedly fired some 400 Tomahawk missiles to intercept Iranian drones and projectiles. That’s estimated to be about ten p.c of the full U.S. stock, at a value of some $800 million. Washington initially ordered 350 Tomahawks for 2026, which it has since elevated to 1,000, however it’s unclear whether or not trade can ship. At present, solely 100 missiles are delivered to the Pentagon yearly. Furthermore, $800 million would purchase 23,000 LUCAS rounds. The Tomahawk is a far superior weapon to the drone in a head-to-head matchup, however it may be overwhelmed by a swarm of drones. The primary week of preventing in Iran confirmed that 2,000 Shaheds are exhausting to intercept and might trigger critical injury. Ukraine has proven that it may intercept about 80 p.c of Shahed strikes. However at bigger volumes, even probably the most succesful present defenses could be overwhelmed, leaving hundreds of munitions free to hunt their targets.
Washington’s use of the costly to neutralize a budget can be unsustainable. In 2025, for instance, Operation Tough Rider towards the Houthis price virtually a billion {dollars}, with Tomahawk missiles and $1.5 million air-launched cruise missiles fired at low-cost projectiles and drones. U.S. allies face the identical problem. When cheap Russian drones violated Polish airspace in September, the Netherlands fired AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles from F-35s, which was catastrophic from a value perspective. Now, given Tehran’s quantity of Shahed-136s, the US and its companions aren’t solely spending an immense sum of money, additionally they danger operating out of air defenses.
LOOKING EAST
The necessity for exact mass is compounded by the risk that China poses to the US. As Admiral Sam Paparo, the pinnacle of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned in January, “We have now to be prepared now.” Washington has neither the time nor the assets to develop an arsenal of recent, refined, and expensive capabilities, however LUCAS and different cheap methods may protect beautiful munitions for probably the most demanding targets whereas assuming a lot of the burden of long-range strikes. This is able to broaden the depth and resilience of U.S. munitions stockpiles whereas additionally being precious for deterrence.
America should, then, speed up the event of exact mass methods and instantly pursue the next three reforms: First, the Pentagon ought to prioritize spending the $7.7 billion it was allotted within the “One Huge Lovely Invoice” on exact mass initiatives that speed up procurement and integration of capabilities, together with low-cost cruise missiles and mass-producible autonomous underwater methods.
Second, the Pentagon must ruthlessly seek for the most effective exact mass methods which might be ripe for scaling. This should embrace a willingness to look overseas, together with at methods invented by pals equivalent to Ukraine, in addition to adversaries. Shifting shortly naturally carries dangers, which prior to now have included the potential for unwarranted no-bid contracts to unproven distributors. With a purpose to forestall corruption and underperformance, which might undermine the success of the entire effort, the Pentagon should conduct rigorous and fast testing and analysis to cull underperformers. Congress should additionally act swiftly to shift {dollars} to distributors that may ship. There are various potential producers of those nonexquisite methods, that means Washington can unleash the facility of free enterprise and competitors to ship outcomes.
Third, the Pentagon should revive the World Struggle II Liberty Ship mannequin for LUCAS and different exact mass capabilities. As the US ready for conflict, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved 18 completely different shipyards throughout the nation to supply the identical cargo ship (generally known as “the Liberty Ship”). This distributed manufacturing mannequin resulted within the building of over 500 Liberty Ships, way over any single provider may have delivered. It could be easy to reintroduce the Liberty Ship mannequin at present since, principally, it requires widespread mental property, permitting a number of producers to fabricate an similar product. The Pentagon has already acknowledged that LUCAS was reverse-engineered from an Iranian design. Since no single firm owns its comparatively easy design, it is a perfect candidate for the Liberty Ship mannequin. The Pentagon ought to pursue simultaneous contracts with a number of distributors and concentrate on the longest-range variations, which can be wanted within the Indo-Pacific.
The U.S. army can not afford to attend till the 2030s for its stockpiles to be restored and elevated. And the US can not afford these costly methods on this new age of conflict. Firing a multimillion-dollar missile at a projectile that prices $35,000 is as unwise as it’s unsustainable. LUCAS reveals that there’s one other manner. Simply as Roosevelt acknowledged that World Struggle II required mass manufacturing, so, too, should policymakers acknowledge that, within the age of exact mass, the U.S. army requires extra than simply beautiful capabilities. It wants drones, it wants them in droves, and it wants them now.
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