Amid the biggest concentration of American military power in the Middle East in decades, the significance – and irony – of one aspect of the US war on Iran has gone largely unnoticed.
In the opening salvoes of the attack, the US quietly introduced its Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (Lucas), a one-way attack drone modelled on the cheap technology that Iran itself has been developing since the 1980s. Those Shahed drones were said to have been inspired by technology developed by Israel, which has co-led the assault with the US.
Necessitated by sanctions, Shahed drones have become (along with ballistic missiles) Iran’s primary domestically produced air weapon – a relatively cheap system designed not so much as to outmatch western defences as exhaust them. The original model (Shahed-131) made its operational debut in September 2019, during an attack on a Saudi oil refinery.
