Pentagon Readies First Kamikaze Drone Unit in the Middle East as Iran Peace Talks End with No Resolution

If the United States goes to war with Iran, a new report says that the U.S. military’s first kamikaze drone unit will go into battle alongside American troops.

The report, first published Thursday in Bloomberg, said that Task Force Scorpion, as it’s called, is ready for service in the Middle East should it arise.

“One of the unit’s drones successfully test launched in the Arabian Gulf in mid-December, off the flight deck of the USS Santa Barbara, one of littoral combat ships in the region today as part of the U.S. armada,” Bloomberg reported.

The report comes as talks again ended between U.S. and Iranian contingents over Iran’s nuclear weapons development ended on Thursday without any deal reached.

And yet again, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that “good progress” had been made at the talks in Geneva, the U.K. Guardian reported.

Araghchi said that the talks were “one of our most intense and longest rounds of negotiations.”

However, as the Guardian noted, this talk from Iranian diplomats and their Omani mediators was “likely seeking to avert a U.S. threat to launch strikes from its fleet of aircraft and warships that have massed in the region.”

And the basic problem remains: The United States keeps wanting Iran to guarantee that not only will they not develop a nuclear weapon but submit to inspections designed to keep enriched uranium down below a certain level. Iran, meanwhile, denies that this is their goal.

This means that the buildup of U.S. military assets continue apace, with “two aircraft carrier strike groups, attack aircraft, plane-refuelling equipment and submarines equipped with Tomahawk missiles” already there, the Guardian reported.

And now, there’s a kamikaze drone force.

“We established the squadron last year to rapidly equip our warfighters with new combat drone capabilities that continue to evolve,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins told Bloomberg via .

Forecast International defense analyst Anna Miskelley said that the program marks “a pivot away from US military reliance on multi-million dollar platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper, which are increasingly difficult to justify in high-attrition, swarm-based conflicts.”

The Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, drones cost about $35,000 each and are produced by an Arizona-based contractor named SpektreWorks.

The Pentagon’s first U.S. kamikaze drone unit — Task Force Scorpion — is now operational in the Middle East and ready if Trump orders strikes on Iran.

The low-cost “LUCAS” drones (~$35K each) are designed for one-way attacks on softer targets like missile sites.

Source: BBG pic.twitter.com/V8G2mu3vMd

— Clash Report (@clashreport) February 26, 2026

CENTCOM said in its statement that the LUCAS drones have “an extensive range and are designed to operate autonomously.”

The 40-pound payload of the drones could give a preview of what the U.S. plans to target in the event of any conflict.

While they couldn’t penetrate hardened targets in Iran, Hudson Institute analyst Bryan Clark said that “this force would be an effective way to attack softer, distributed targets in Iran like missile production facilities, road networks and missile launch sites.”

“Destroying these kinds of targets require a lot of dispersed attacks that inexpensive drones are well suited to deliver,” he said.

“Iran doesn’t have much of an air defense network anymore, so they may not be able to shoot down many.”

While Araghchi said that he expects a deal “very soon,” possibly in “about a week,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t sound so sure, noting that Iran’s refusal to discuss its ballistic missile program and be honest about its uranium enrichment goals were stumbling blocks to an agreement.

“They’re not enriching right now, but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can,” Rubio said.

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