Can we make cheap drones?

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Iran Stole Drone Technology from America First
To be fair, the base of the Iranian drone arsenal was also pilfered from the United States. In December 2011, during the Obama administration, Iran’s cyberwarfare unit hijacked an American RQ-170 drone and brought it down safely inside Iranian airspace. (Whether the drone was in Iranian airspace, or in western Afghanistan, is a continuing dispute.) The Iranians completely reverse-engineered the American system, and it became the basis of early Shahed models.

From the initial boost the captured RQ-170 in 2011 gave the Iranian drone program, Tehran has, much to its credit, innovated an entirely new set of drone models—including the Shahed-136—that are now outstripping the systems the Americans are producing or developing.

In Turn, the Americans Ripped Off Iran’s Shahed-136 Drone
Enter the US Marine Corps’ Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS). At first glance, one can see that almost any pretense of originality or innovation on the part of the Americans is gone. The drone is literally just a clone of the Shahed-136.

Of course, one might argue that turnabout is fair play—and the theft is appropriate payback for the 2011 theft of America’s RQ-170 by Iran. Nevertheless, it is telling that the US military is now pilfering technology from Iran, a nation we were led to believe is hopelessly backward. If that is true, why are we taking anything from them?

The US Marine Corps has been testing the new LUCAS drone at the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. US defense planners are hopeful that the positive results from these tests will lead to a rapid scaling of the LUCAS drone. These drones will eventually be deployed in the field and will be used against moving targets, such as vehicles.

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Those are $30-$50k a pop right?

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