What we're looking at here is a Lucas drone dive bombing an enemy shelter in Iraq. This is the American copy of the Iranian Shahed drone, which has been used to great effect by Iran and Russia to strike America and Ukraine. This is the very first time we've seen a Lucas drone used in combat and the first time in decades that America has copied one of its enemies weapons to use against it. So, how does the Lucas work? Is it effective? And compared to the Shahed, which one is better? We're going to break down how these drones are put together and take a look at them in action to find out. This is the Lucas, whose name stands for lowcost uncrrewed combat attack system. The facts and

figures are as follows. Each drone is 10 ft long and has a wingspan of 8 ft. It has a top speed of around 115 mph and is thought to have a range of 500 m. The payload can weigh up to £40 and the whole drone weighs £180 when fully loaded. The total cost for one of these is around $35,000, which is very cheap. Compare that to the Shahed 136. It is 11 ft long and has a wingspan of 8 ft. It has a top speed of 125 miles per hour and is thought to have a range of 1,500 miles. A Shahed's warhead weighs around $110 and the whole drone weighs £440 and the total cost is somewhere around £35,000 per unit. Already we can see that despite appearances, these two drones have some pretty significant differences that will

only become more apparent as we get into the nitty-gritty. Starting at the back of the Lucas, we've got a two-cylinder DA215 engine. Just like the Shahed, this engine was used in large model aircraft before being put into drones. But unlike the Shahed, it produces 215 horsepower, whereas the Iranian version only produces 50. And the US version runs much quieter, too, making the drone harder to detect. The engine is attached to a simple wooden propeller, which spins around and pushes the drone through the air. Mounted just in front of the engine attached to the body of the drone is the guidance kit. This looks like a Starling terminal, but is actually thought to be a military copycat called Star Shield, which allows

the drone to be controlled by satellite. Remember that it's a major difference from the Shahed, which we'll discuss more in just a moment. Next up, to either side of the engine at the back of the wings, we have the flaps. These are attached to mechanical arms which move them up and down remotely, steering the drone left and right. Then there's the wings themselves. Just like the shahed, these are a delta shape, so-called because they resemble the Greek letter delta. On the end of each of the wings are vertical stabilizers. In the middle of the fuselage is a black cap. This is likely the filler cap for the fuel tanks, which identical to the shahed are filled with regular gasoline. And then

up the front is the payload. This can be filled with 40 lb of high explosive, which is designed to blow up whatever the drone flies into, but it can also be swapped out for surveillance sensors to spy on enemies or electronic warfare equipment to mess with their electrics. Another big difference with the Shahed. And then in the nose of the Lucas drone, we have a camera attached to a gimbal. This allows the camera to spin through 360°. A third big difference. Stitch all of that together and we can see why Lucas and Shahed are not the same. They both launch the same way. A small rocket motor gets them airborne before the

petrol motor takes over and flies them towards their target. But while the Shahed has to be pre-programmed with a route and a target before takeoff and cannot change course once launched, the Lucas can. That's because the satellite relay at the back of the drone allows the pilot to communicate with it over huge distances and the camera at the front allows the pilot to see what the drone is seeing. That means they can scan the battlefield for new targets once Lucas is in the air and input new directions if they see something that's worth attacking more than the original target. Equally, it means the Lucas can also hit moving targets like tanks. If the drone arrives at its target

destination and the tank has moved, the pilot can simply steer the drone towards it. But perhaps most significantly, this satellite relay also allows the Lucas drone to talk to other nearby Lucas drones. This allows the drones to coordinate with one another as part of a swarm, and it makes them way more powerful. Flying this way, the drones would approach the battlefield spread out, meaning they would be hard to detect and shoot down. As they fly, they would be scanning the ground looking for targets to strike. Once they had identified an enemy base or a formation, AI targeting systems would allow them to decide what to hit and in what order to cause the maximum devastation. Only then

would the drones bunch up and dive bomb their targets, giving the enemy minimal time to react. All of this could be done without the pilots having to give their drones any instructions. If we go back to the tapes, then we can see some of that in action. This footage comes from an Iranian linked militia in Iraq during the early stages of Operation Epic Fury. You can see the Lucas drone approaching its target. What's notable is that you can't hear it, at least until it starts dive bombing.

Shahad drones can usually be heard before they're even seen, suggesting the engine on the Lucas is indeed quieter. You can also see how it acquires its target and then dive bombs into it just like a shahed would. On this occasion, the target seems to have been a fixed location, a building. That means we can't definitively say from this footage whether Lucas can actually hit moving targets, as we assume. It also appears to be flying alone and doesn't notably change course in the last moments of its attack, meaning we can't say anything about its swimming capabilities or whether it was being controlled remotely by a pilot. This is an additional tape from Iraq where locals appear to have

recovered an intact Lucas drone. In this video, you can see the satellite communication dish that we mentioned. It's fallen out of its housing and is hanging by a wire. You can also see that one of the propeller blades has broken off and one of the wing tip stabilizers appears to be missing, perhaps suggesting why this drone crashed. In two final pieces of video, you can hear Dan Cooper, the head of Sententcom, that's US Central Command, which covers the Middle East, talking about how the drones were used. Let's hear his review of the Lucas drones combat debut. US Central Command's drone task force called Task Force Scorpion Strike launched countless one-way attack drones, achieving massive effects. Lucas

Indispensable, uh, as many of you know, and if you don't know, this was an original Iranian drone design. We captured it, pulled the guts out, sent it back to America, put a little Made America on it, brought it back here, and we're shooting it uh at the Iranians. Good targets. So, from what we've seen and heard, how does the Lucas compare to the Iranian Shahed? Which one is better? And are we going to be seeing a lot more of them in combat? Well, despite obvious physical similarities, we've seen that Lucas and Shahed are in fact very different beasts. The Shahed is larger, heavier, carries a bigger payload, and has a much longer range, around three times longer. In fact, that means it's

useful for long range strike missions like hitting enemy headquarters, logistics bases, and radar installations far behind the front line. These are fixed, which is handy because the shahed couldn't hit them if they were moving and require a fair bit of explosive to destroy. And if we look at the evidence from the war so far, that's exactly what Iran has used these drones to do. We know tan successfully hit anti-air radar at two of the biggest American air bases in the Middle East and damaged a huge phased array radar in Qatar. It also struck fifth fleet headquarters in Bahrain and a logistics base in Q8, sadly killing six American soldiers. While Iran has missiles that will do the

same job, the drones are useful for a couple of reasons. First, they attack a blind spot in America's air defenses, which were designed to spot the high-flying, fast-moving missiles. They're not very good at spotting slowmoving, low-flying drones, meaning shaheds will often get through where the missiles will be spotted and shot down. Second, even if the drones are spotted, America has to use up a missile that is much, much more expensive in order to shoot it down. Best case scenario, the bases are protected, but the war ends up costing America way more than Iran.

Worst case, it runs out of missile interceptors, leaving his bases vulnerable. The Lucas drone, meanwhile, is smaller, lighter, packs less of a punch, and has a much shorter range. But it can carry different payloads, explosive surveillance, electronic warfare, and can target a much greater variety of stuff, including things on the move. That means the Lucas isn't so much a replacement for America's missiles as it is a complement to them. Because they're cheap and much easier to make than a missile, the drones can be deployed against low value targets within short or medium ranges. Perhaps not the main headquarters of the Iranian army, but a field barracks, an ammo dump, or a vehicle workshop. Destroying

these targets might not [__] an adversary, but it will introduce friction to their battle plans, like throwing sand in the gears of a complex machine. It'll still run afterwards, but not as well. Or they can be sent after troop and tank formations on the battlefield. Their ability to hit moving targets means this is theoretically possible, and using swarm tactics would make this kind of attack a nightmare to stop. Crucially, this would free up America's sophisticated missiles to go after the long range, high-v value targets like army headquarters or weapons factory. The kind of targets that would justify spending several million dollars to hit. Using drones in this way keeps the cost of a war down while causing the same amount of damage

to the enemy, meaning America can fight for longer if it has to. It's therefore impossible to say which is better, the Lucas or the Shahed. Certainly, the Lucas is more sophisticated, but given the different kinds of attacks each one would be used for, it's a little like comparing apples and oranges. What we can say is that so far America seems to have found the Lucas drone useful. In fact, General Cooper called it indispensable, that significant. So is the fact that, as far as we can tell, this is the first time since the Cold War that America has copied the weapon design of an enemy. It's usually the other way around. adversaries stealing weapons designs from the US. In case you

were wondering, the weapon America stole back in the 70s was a Soviet floating pontoon bridge. What that tells us is that we can expect to see a lot more of these drones on the battlefields of the future. The fact that America went out of its way to copy an adversary shows just how useful this weapon has proved itself in the short time it's been around. Russia has used it extensively against Ukraine. Iran has used it extensively against America. And now America looks set to use it extensively against Iran. In other words, three very different militaries using very different battle strategies have all found a use for it. For better or worse, the skies over the battlefields of the

future are likely to be full of weapons like these.