WASHINGTON – The Pentagon's first kamikaze drone unit is ready to participate
if US President Donald Trump decides to launch strikes against Iran
according to U.S. officials and analysts.
The drone unit is known as Task Force Scorpion and evolved from an experimental U.S. military drone unit. It is now ready to operate, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said in an emailed statement.
“We established the squadron last year to quickly equip our warfighters with new combat drone capabilities that continue to evolve,” he said.
The one-way attack drone unit is now part of the largest U.S. regional military buildup since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ordered by Mr. Trump to pressure Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program.
US-Iran talks continued on February 26 in Geneva, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying that both sides had made good progress and that a new round of talks could take place “very soon”, perhaps in “about a week”.
One of the unit's drones was successfully launched into the Persian Gulf in mid-December 2025, from the flight deck of the USS Santa Barbara, one of the region's littoral combat ships now part of the US armada.
The unit's deployment marks “a shift away from the U.S. military's reliance on multimillion-dollar platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper, which are increasingly difficult to justify in high-attrition, swarm-based conflicts,” said Anna Miskelley, a defense analyst at Forecast International.
CENTCOM has estimated that the LUCAS (Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System) drones cost about US$35,000 (S$44,200) each. The LUCAS lightweight drones are produced by Arizona-based SpektreWorks and can be launched for, among other tasks, one-way attacks, reconnaissance missions and maritime strikes. The drones have “extended range and are designed to operate autonomously,” according to a separate CENTCOM statement.
Although the drone unit represents only a small part of a larger deployment, its involvement in any future military action would be a first for the brand new unit. It could also validate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's mandate to accelerate the U.S. military's use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
At the same time, the fact that the unit's unidirectional attack drones were reverse-engineered from Iran's Shahed-136 shows that the United States is still playing catch-up after years of Russia and Iran using kamikaze drones to hit targets, including in Ukraine.
With a payload of 18 kg, LUCAS drones could not be used against hardened Iranian targets. But “this force would be an effective way to attack lighter, more distributed targets in Iran, such as missile production facilities, road networks and missile launch sites,” according to Mr. Bryan Clark, an analyst at the Hudson Institute think tank and a former US Navy strategic planner.
“Destroying these types of targets requires many dispersed attacks that inexpensive drones are well suited to launch,” he said. “Iran no longer has a large air defense network, so it may not be able to shoot down many.” BLOOMBERG
