Florida fishing charter hauls up Air Force one-way attack drone modelled on Shahed-136

A charter fishing crew captained by Daniel Arsenault pulled a roughly 10-foot, delta-wing drone from the Gulf of Mexico on 19 September, about 20 miles southeast of Pensacola Pass, after mistaking it for floating debris.² The Coast Guard, tied up with an active search, told the crew to bring it in themselves; a local sheriff's department took custody once ashore, and Arsenault said the military called later that day asking for "their drone back."² Eglin Air Force Base initially would only confirm a "test article went down," but issued a follow-up statement on 21 September identifying it as a LUCAS unmanned aircraft that "impacted the water during routine scheduled testing on the Eglin AFB Range" on 17 September, and said it has since been recovered by the Department.¹ LUCAS (the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System) began as the FLM-136 target drone built by SpecktreWorks to mimic Iran's Shahed-136, before being weaponised; CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins told The War Zone it costs "approximately $35,000 per platform" and falls under Task Force Scorpion Strike, the military's first one-way attack drone unit.¹

Why it matters: The US is now losing test rounds of its own cheap, Shahed-inspired strike drone into the Gulf, underscoring how fast one-way attack drones are proliferating on both sides of the counter-UAS fight, and how mundane their recovery process (a fishing boat, a sheriff's department) still is.