Why the US is using a cheap Iranian drone against the country itself

Iran invented the relatively simple Shahed 136 attack drone, but now defends itself against American copies launched against it in combat. Why, when the US military has expensive, cutting-edge, hi-tech weapons, does it make flimsy motorcycle-powered drones?

Iranian company Shahed Aviation Industries originally designed the 136. It is 2.6 meters long and can carry a 15-kilogram payload over a distance of about 2,500 kilometers. It moves at a relatively modest speed of around 185 kilometers per hour – much slower than cruise missiles or bomb-carrying aircraft. However, it has the advantage of extremely low cost—perhaps as low as $50,000 per unit.

Shahed are now used by the hundreds in Russia’s daily attacks on Ukraine, requiring layers of air defenses – including fighter jets, machine guns, missiles and fighter drones – to try to shoot them down before they hit civilian or military targets. They are even used Houthi forces in Yemen.

Iran this week used Shahed drones and a range of other hardware in attacks around the Persian Gulf in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes. In return, the US military used its Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), manufactured by Arizona-based Spektreworks, first time in combat against Iran, which is a reverse modified copy of the Shahed 136. This means that Iran’s own design is now being used against it.

LUCAS is modular and allows the installation of reconnaissance or communications equipment or a ground strike warhead. Spektreworks calls it FLM 136seemingly a nod to the Shahed 136, from whose design it was cloned.

The US reportedly reverse-engineered the drone after capturing Iranian-backed militia units in Iraq and Syria. It successfully tested a US Navy ship last year.

Anthony King at the University of Exeter in the UK says that cheap, relatively simple attack drones like the Shahed are essentially a modern version of “doodlebug” – flying V-1 jets used by Nazi Germany to bomb the United Kingdom in World War II.

Such munitions are cheap and easy to produce at scale, and can be used in quantities that overwhelm an adversary, engulf even highly sophisticated air defenses until they fail, or consume enormous resources and make combat unsustainable. This leaves the opponent vulnerable to further attacks.

“You’re knocking them out of the sky with ammunition that’s not only much more expensive than the Shahed, but sometimes more expensive than the thing the Shahed actually hits,” says King. “There were many cases where the target Shahed hit was cheaper than the Patriot missile [used to take it down]. The appearance of these crude but effective remote systems is changing the economic calculus of war in an interesting way.”

Interestingly, there is reason to believe that Iran copied the original Shahed 136 design from a Cold War device. A 1980s project between Germany and the US for a similar device that could engage Soviet radar stations or absorb air defenses to protect other aircraft led to the Dornier design of the so-called Die Drohne Antiradar – literally “anti-radar drone”.

Ian Muirhead at the University of Manchester in the UK, who previously spent 23 years in the military, says Shahed drones will never replace manned aircraft or highly advanced missiles, but that they are increasingly finding use in combat and that Western militaries are learning from the war in Ukraine and adopting similar weapons.

“A lot of modern weapons are extremely complex and expensive, and if you have a large-scale conflict like this, having lots of cheap, expendable weapons — especially if you don’t have any big guns left — is more effective,” says Muirhead. “If you can send a thousand of them, you can overwhelm the defense with cheap ammo.

“It’s just economics: if it costs you 10 times more to defend than your attackers, you’re never going to be able to outplay the other side,” says Muirhead.

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