New Delhi: As the US-Israel operation against Tehran enters a new phase, Washington has deployed a weapon engineered after Iran’s own battlefield design’a one-way attack drone called the Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS).

“CENTCOM’s Task Force Scorpion Strike’for the first time in history’is using one-way attack drones in combat during Operation Epic Fury. These low-cost drones, modeled after Iran’s Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution,” CENTCOM said in a post on X.

The combat debut came eight months after LUCAS was publicly unveiled at the Pentagon in July 2025’a timeline that US defence officials have cited as deliberate proof that the military can compress its traditionally slow acquisition process when strategic urgency demands it.

LUCAS is a loitering munition, more commonly known as a kamikaze drone. (Kamikaze was a World War II-era practice by Japan when it loaded aircraft with explosives, and deliberately crashed planes on enemy targets)

Unlike surveillance drones that return to base after gathering intelligence, LUCAS is engineered to identify and strike a target, detonating upon impact, with no recovery once launched.

Its V-shaped airframe is directly modelled on Iran’s Shahed-136, an autonomous, pusher-propelled one-way attack drone that experts say were wreaking havoc across the Gulf and have been deployed extensively by Russia in its war against Ukraine.