Posted on 07/17/2025 1:27:34 PM PDT by McGruff
The United States has unveiled its own low-cost combat drone, designed to rival Iran’s widely used Shahed-136 loitering munition, in a push to expand affordable airpower options for modern battlefields.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday reviewed the new Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) during a display of multi-domain autonomous systems in the Pentagon courtyard. The system, developed by Arizona-based defense contractor SpektreWorks, is aimed at delivering a flexible, attritable platform that can support distributed operations across the Indo-Pacific.
SpektreWorks described LUCAS as “a reliable and cost-effective Group 3 Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) designed to perform in austere conditions with minimal logistical requirements.” The drone’s open architecture allows it to integrate a variety of payloads, offering a modular approach to reconnaissance, strike, and communications support missions.
LUCAS is capable of operating as a target drone or as an optionally powered combat system. It features multiple launch configurations, including Rocket-Assisted Take-Off (RATO) and truck-based deployment, making it suitable for rapid fielding by non-specialized personnel.
(Excerpt) Read more at defence-blog.com ...
“It is right to learn, even from an enemy” - Ovid
“DEveloped” is a bit of a misnomer. Numerous suppliers have demonstrated these for years (the Biden years ...) but the US DoD never invested in them. Really all they had to do was order a bunch.
Go figure.
Now lets have the West make 1 million per year of them and flood the Ukranian battlefield with them against the Russian invaders. Oh and pound Moscow and St, Petersburg with longer range missiles too. Disrupt their ability to have flights going in and out of their airports. Missiles against their drone and missile manufacturing sites and fuel refineries. Maybe blow up some rail hubs and pipelines too? Let the shoe be oin the other foot. They want to threaten nukes again and again? Let them. Lying bluffers they are.
I disagree with this fashion of calling a drone a kamikaze. Is the drone committing suicide? By that logic every 16 inch shell we fired in World War II was a kamikaze shell.
Does anyone remember when Obama gave Iran our most sensitive drone technology?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Yeah, let’s bombard Moscow and St. Petersburg with thousands of bombs. I wonder why nobody else part of that idea? You’re very bold in asserting that nobody whatever they’re going to clear. How long would we accept thousands of 500 pound bombs hitting Los Angeles, DC, or New York?
And for what? To protect a Nazi dominated dictator ship with zero freedom of speech, zero political parties, no elections, banning religions, and grabbing people off the street and sending them directly to the front. That’s filthy in America should have nothing to do with it
Bold to assert they will never go nuclear
I’ve put some thought into it. What’s in it fir them except negatives?
I LIKE Russia. I think it’s ridiculous we are not close friends and partners. Hopefully we will be again and soon. Much more in common. Russias concerns regarding Ukraine could have been fixed without war.
Putin has said that nuclear weapons would be used to defend the homeland if in jeopardy. No one in their right might would try it.
Be nice if the Neocons would think about having OUR MILITARY develop weapons, rather than having to copy that of other countries.
$35,000.00 each.
“”It features multiple launch configurations, including Rocket-Assisted Take-Off (RATO) and truck-based deployment, making it suitable for rapid fielding by non-specialized personnel.””
Do they also have washer and dryer capability?
.
We and Russia have been allies.
We will probably have to be again against the China+Islam Axis.
Russia's concerns regarding Ukraine could have been fixed without war.
You mean like accepting that the people in Crimea voted to rejoin Russia?
That's just crazy talk, where's the 10% for the Big Guy in that???
Yeah, corruption destroys everything.
There’s no good reason that Cuba and the Cuban people aren’t a wealthy nation and people with good living for all there except corruption and greed of cruel communist grifters.
How does Putin launching nukes to keep his invasion going”defend” Russia in any meaningful way? They’d have to be crazy to launch at the West! And if they are, guess what, we are too and would destroy them utterly. Us too if necessary.
We had to burn the planet to save it...</Vietnam>
I simply do not agree that a nuclear power, especially with their background from WWII at the least, would let us bomb Moscow and not go nuclear.
Again, if Russia was bombing DC or LA or NY, whether by proxy or not, we would be guaranteed to attack.
And one other thing not often discussed, but well known in nuclear escalation gaming is that conventional attacks are also a nuclear threat.
Say we saw a Russian missile, launched from Venezuela or Cuba, headed straight for DC. and somehow we believed it was conventional. Say we accept the hits or try to shoot it down or whatever. Say it keeps happening.
The Russians are smart enough, and Putin even directly said, that normalizing the idea that we will pound Moscow with conventional weapons is a bad idea. It essentially acclimatizes you to not worry about the incoming.... and THAT is when you are incredibly vulnerable to a surprise first strike.
So if the US, starts sending hundreds or thousands of warheads into Moscow, they know that on any given day, it might be a nuclear attack after they were lulled into complacency.
Im at a point in life that I no longer give in to nuclear blackmail. They (Russia) can either put up or shut up with their nuclear threats to the West. If they want to bomb Kiev with abandon, because they can, we will arm the Ukes to bomb Moscow with abandon, because they now can too. F*ck Putin and Russia. Big talkers. If we all die we all die. We all knew the risks. I’m not willing to live giving in to Putins nuclear blackmail, 24/7. And I vote that you don’t get to either. So there.
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