From Shahed to Saturation: How LUCAS Drones Rewrote U.S. Warfighting Depth

An interview with former Pentagon official Michael C. Horowitz explains how the U.S. developed LUCAS, a low-cost unmanned combat drone reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed‑136 and first fielded in Operation Epic Fury. The program, pushed through under both the Trump and Biden administrations with support from the Defense Innovation Unit, APFIT, and SpektreWorks, aims to flood the force with inexpensive, mass-produced precision munitions to supplement—not replace—high-end weapons like Tomahawks. Horowitz argues this “mass depth” approach could complicate defenses against peers like China, advocates tens of thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of units, and signals a broader shift toward scalable, risk-tolerant defense procurement, though production bottlenecks and operational use questions remain.