{ "archive_path": "archive/1789941941.80125", "base_url": "www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone", "basename": "shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone", "bookmarked_date": "2026-09-20 22:05", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.twz.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone.html" }, "domain": "www.twz.com", "extension": "", "hash": "190T1DMZ7MNR2X37KFFJ", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.twz.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-21T01:18:37.167390+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789941941.80125", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-21T01:18:36.658356+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-21T01:18:37.611769+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789941941.80125", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-21T01:18:37.176354+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-09-21T01:19:17.690343+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789941941.80125", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-21T01:19:13.932021+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp3zatimlx", "https://www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-09-21T01:19:13.916721+00:00", "index_texts": [ "A Florida fishing charter boat made a very unusual catch Saturday while operating near Eglin Air Force Base. Located in the western end of the Florida Panhandle, Eglin is home of the U.S. Air Force weapons test wing. Hot Spots Charters pulled a delta-wing aerial drone out of the water during an excursion, according local charter captain Charlie Green. The recovered drone closely resembles a clone of the Iranian Shahed-136 one-way attack weapon, specifically the U.S. military\u2019s Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) that took center stage during its first combat use in Operation Epic Fury. The target version of that drone is built by SpecktreWorks and is designated the FLM-136. It was originally designed for mimicking one-way attack munitions, specifically the Shahed-136, which it was reverse engineered from, for testing and training before it was weaponized into LUCAS. \n\n\n\nAn Eglin AFB spokesperson told us the installation recently lost a drone, but would not confirm it was the same one found by Hot Spots Charters.\n\n\n\n\u201cI can confirm that we were doing a test and the test article went down,\u201d the spokesperson told us, declining to provide further details about what kind of drone, when it was lost or the location it went down. They referred us to the Pentagon, which could not immediately provide any additional details.\u00a0\n\n\n\n\u201cThe drone was found by local charter Capt. Daniel Arsenault with Hot Spots Charters,\u201d said Green, who is also an aviation photographer whose work can be found at Aquatic Charlie on social media. \u201cHe saw the object at a distance and went over to check it out. When he did, he pulled a good size mahi-mahi out from underneath it, complementing his already stocked cooler full of fish from that morning charter. His passengers helped him haul it aboard.\u201d\n\n\n\nThe drone found by Hot Spots Charters. (Charlie Green) \n\n\n\n\u201cArsenault and his charter company did all the due diligence possible to notify local agencies of the recovery- and was eventually collected by one of them,\u201d Green added. He did not know which agency.\n\n\n\nImages taken of the drone shared with us by Green show that it did not have the engine, propeller or the nose cone/seeker intact. Losing these kind of components is common for impacts into water. \n\n\n\n(Charlie Green) \n\n\n\nWhile the Eglin spokesperson offered scant details, the host unit at the installation is the 96th Test Wing, which is the \u201ctest and evaluation center for Air Force air-delivered weapons, navigation and guidance systems, command and control systems, and Air Force Special Operations Command systems,\u201d according to the wing\u2019s homepage. It oversees the massive Eglin Gulf Test Range, which \u201cprovides approximately 120,000 square miles of overwater airspace, covering the eastern third of the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida panhandle to the Florida Keys. The land range covers 724 square miles and contains 70 specific test and training areas, including an approved depleted uranium test range and the only qualified air-to-ground supersonic range east of the Mississippi River.\u201d\n\n\n\nEglin Test Range. (Eglin Air Force Base) \n\n\n\nAs noted in the opening of this article, the LUCAS drone was used for the first time in combat during the opening day of the Operation Epic Fury war on Iran on Feb. 28.\u00a0\n\n\n\n\u201cCosting approximately $35,000 per platform, LUCAS is a low-cost, scalable system that provides cutting-edge capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional long-range U.S. systems that can deliver similar effects,\u201d Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, told TWZ when the command stood up Task Force Scorpion Strike (TFSS), the military\u2019s first one-way attack drone unit, back in December. \u201cThe drone system has an extensive range and the ability to operate beyond line of sight, providing significant capability across CENTCOM\u2019s vast operating area.\u201d\n\n\n\n\u201cLUCAS drones deployed by CENTCOM have an extensive range and are designed to operate autonomously,\u201d CENTCOM added in a press release. \u201cThey can be launched with different mechanisms to include catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff, and mobile ground and vehicle systems.\u201d\n\n\n\nTFSS falls under the auspices of U.S. Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), which oversees U.S. special operations activities across the Middle East.\n\n\n\nA LUCAS drone. (NAVCENT/C5F/U.S. Army Spc. Kayla McGuire) NAVCENT/C5F/U.S. Army Spc. Kayla Mc Guire \n\n\n\nA LUCAS drone. (Courtesy photo/Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division) \n\n\n\nWhile we aren\u2019t sure if the drone found by Hot Spots Charters is the one lost by Eglin, it wouldn\u2019t be the first time something like this has happened in Florida. For example, in 2021, beachcombers in Florida\u2019s Palm Beach County found a U.S. Air Force BQM-167A high-performance target drone that washed ashore. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIndeed, the Air Force has a handful of 120-foot boats, the only vessels in its service, to help recover drones after they are shot down during live-fire exercises, or otherwise need to be recovered from these waters. The boats are operated by a contracted crew from Florida Offshore and retrieve around 100 of the drones each year.\n\n\n\nThe FLM-136\u2019s origins as a target drone are highly relevant here. Counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) capabilities are being hotly pursued on all fronts across the U.S. military as the threat from them has ballooned. During the war in Ukraine and multiple engagements with Iran, including Operation Epic Fury, one-way attack drones have proven to be a massive threat that is heavily influencing how wars are fought. As far as Eglin AFB goes, maybe the most high-profile C-UAS development as of late that has emerged from there has been arming USAF fighters with FALCO APKWS laser-guided rockets to shoot down exactly the same kind of threat that the FLM-136 is meant to emulate. This program began in 2019, which TWZ was first to report on, but was finally rushed into service years later as the standoff with Iran went hot. Now there are many other programs aimed at dealing with these same threats, including a more capable \u201cfire and forget\u201d air-to-air APKWS. \n\n\n\nA 2019 test of air-to-air APKWS laser-guided rockets occurred off Eglin AFB. (USAF) \n\n\n\nLUCAS development is continuing at a high-pace, with its ability to swarm cooperatively with other LUCAS drones \u2014 a feature we reported as central to the LUCAS vision when the existence of the program was disclosed \u2014 being worked on now. You can read more about this here. These systems need sanitized airspace for development activities, and the vast ranges over the gulf are some of the best in the country for it. \n\n\n\nSo, it\u2019s not surprising to see an FLM-136 floating in the waters off Eglin AFB. Even in the war with Iran, there were multiple losses of LUCAS drones where they were found intact. These weapons are produced to be risked in large numbers, and some failing, for whatever reason, is just part of the calculus. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nLocals in Iraq appear to have recovered a crashed and almost entirely intact Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS), an American copy of the Iranian Shahed-136 Attack Drone, which is confirmed to have been used recently by Task Force Scorpion Strike during U.S. attacks on\u2026 pic.twitter.com/SEqO6627en\u2014 OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 2, 2026\n\n\n\n\n\nWe will update this story with any additional details we can find about this drone. Though we don\u2019t yet know for sure where it came from, one thing is for certain, the folks on the Hot Spots Charters boat that found it will always have a good tale about the one that didn\u2019t get away.\n\n\n\nContact the author: howard@twz.com" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789941941.80125", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-21T01:19:11.643512+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-09-21T01:19:11.636044+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Shahed-136 Clone Found By Florida Fisherman, Eglin AFB Admits It Lost A Drone", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789941941.80125", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-21T01:19:11.585769+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-09-21T01:19:11.575534+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1789941941.80125", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-09-21T01:18:37.620535+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Shahed-136 Clone Found By Florida Fisherman, Eglin AFB Admits It Lost A Drone", "warc": null, "wget": "www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1789941941.80125", "newest_archive_date": "2026-09-21T01:19:13.932021+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-09-21T01:18:36.658356+00:00", "path": "/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "76238494-796d-4b7a-98c6-982a1dd7fd7e", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1789941941-import.txt" ], "tags": ",war-wiki,escalation,pool", "tags_str": "war-wiki,escalation,pool", "timestamp": "1789941941.80125", "title": "Shahed-136 Clone Found By Florida Fisherman, Eglin AFB Admits It Lost A Drone", "updated": "2026-09-21T01:18:36.657731+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-09-21 01:18", "url": "https://www.twz.com/air/shahed-136-clone-found-by-florida-fisherman-eglin-afb-admits-it-lost-a-drone" }