US Prepares to Deploy Kamikaze Drones in Potential Iran Strike
The United States’ first kamikaze drone unit has been reported ready for deployment should President Donald Trump decide to launch an attack on Iran. The US kamikaze drones, which possess lethal one-way strike capabilities, can also be deployed for reconnaissance missions.
The readiness of the US kamikaze drone deployment, as reported by Al Arabiya on Friday, 27 February 2026, was announced by major media outlet Bloomberg, following a statement from Captain Tim Hawkins, spokesman for the US Central Command, confirming the operational readiness of the drone unit.
The kamikaze drone unit, manufactured by SpektreWorks and based in Arizona, is known as Task Force Scorpion and represents a development from the US military’s experimental drone unit. Hawkins confirmed in a statement via email to Bloomberg that the drone unit is now operationally ready.
“We formed this squadron last year to rapidly equip our troops with cutting-edge evolving combat drone capabilities,” Hawkins said in his statement.
This one-way strike drone unit is part of a large-scale US military deployment in the Middle East, ordered by Trump to pressure Iran into reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme.
US-Iran negotiations continued in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday, 26 February, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stating that both sides had made good progress and that the latest round of negotiations could be held “soon”.
One of the kamikaze drones was successfully tested in the Gulf region in mid-December last year, launched from the flight deck of the USS Santa Barbara, one of the littoral combat ships deployed to the region as part of the US fleet.
Defence analyst Anna Miskelley from Forecast International views the deployment of the kamikaze drone unit as marking “a shift away from the US military’s reliance on million-dollar platforms such as the MQ-9 Reaper, which are increasingly difficult to justify use in high-attrition, swarm-based conflicts”.
CENTCOM estimates the drone, officially named the “Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System” or “LUCAS”, costs approximately US$35,000 (Rp 586.9 million) per unit.
The lightweight LUCAS drone can be launched for one-way strikes, reconnaissance missions and maritime attacks, amongst other tasks. According to CENTCOM, the drone features “wide range and is designed to operate autonomously”.
Although this kamikaze drone unit represents only a small part of the broader deployment, its involvement in future military operations will be the first for this newly formed unit.
This could also validate Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s mandate to accelerate the US military’s use of unmanned aircraft.
At the same time, the fact that the kamikaze drone is a reverse-engineered product of Iran’s Shahed-136 drone demonstrates that the US is still attempting to catch up after Russian and Iranian forces have for years used kamikaze drones to attack targets.