lucas

The cost to connect each of the U.S. military’s Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) one-way attack drones to space-based networks has risen from $5,000 to $25,000 a month, according to a new report. This is said to be the result of a switch from using the commercial Starlink network to its more secure government-focused cousin Starshield, which SpaceX demanded after extensive use of LUCAS drones in the latest conflict with Iran. The Pentagon has pushed back on the story, but it still highlights how critical SpaceX’s networks and other space services have become across the U.S. government, which TWZ has previously explored in detail.

Reuters first reported on the price increase to connect the datalinks on LUCAS drones to SpaceX’s space-based networks earlier today. The story cites anonymous sources, as well as Pentagon documents the outlet says it reviewed. This follows the recent announcement that the Pentagon is working to make LUCAS more autonomous with new artificial intelligence (AI) driven swarming capabilities, which could impact future connectivity demands.

Produced by SpektreWorks, LUCAS was developed in close cooperation with the U.S. military. It is a reverse-engineered clone of the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 and has a unit cost of around $35,000. The American drone already comes in multiple variations, and there is a related target drone design for use in training and test and evaluation activities. Versions fitted with miniature beyond-line-of-sight satellite datalinks, allowing for dynamic control and for their progress to be otherwise monitored after launch, have been a fixture in official pictures of LUCAS drones in the Middle East.

In the video in the social media post below, the satellite communications terminal can be seen hanging from a cord on a LUCAS drone said to have been recovered largely intact in Iraq.

The U.S. military announced it had begun fielding LUCAS drones operationally last December with a special operations-led task force in the Middle East. LUCAS’s official combat debut came in the opening wave of strikes on Iran on February 28. U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, subsequently described the one-way attackers as an “indispensable” component of that operation, dubbed Epic Fury.

What we know about SpaceX’s reported upcharge for LUCAS

“Within weeks of the United States launching its bombing campaign, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued ​the military had been paying about $5,000 for connection per terminal while effectively using a higher tier of service worth closer to $25,000,” according to Reuters. “SpaceX argued the ⁠LUCAS drones were operating under conditions that aligned more closely with its aviation tier subscription rather than a lower priced land or mobility service. Pentagon officials argued that the $25,000 price tag – a monthly fee – was designed for aircraft, not kamikaze drones that used Starlink connection for a matter of minutes ​or hours.”

“The Pentagon, which was ramping up strikes on Iran, ultimately agreed to pay SpaceX’s proposed price increase,” Reuters‘ report added.

The story also said this reflected broader “tensions” between the Pentagon and SpaceX that have been growing recently over Starlink fees.

“The Fake News media has the story wrong, again,” top Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell subsequently wrote in a post on X. “The claims in this article are simply not based in reality and do not reflect the close, effective collaboration between our teams.”

When reached for comment by TWZ earlier today before Parnell’s post, the Pentagon did not directly address Reuters‘ report.

“The Department of War is committed to fostering a competitive environment for commercial satellite communications and is conducting comprehensive market research to continuously monitor commercial offerings that align with government requirements,” a Pentagon official told us. “We are actively engaging with industry to identify innovative solutions and new entrants, ensuring acquisitions are inclusive of a diverse range of capable vendors.”

“The Commercial Satellite Communications Office is working on additional options with other proliferated low earth orbit partners as part of its strategy to leverage the unprecedented capabilities provided by the commercial SATCOM industry,” that same official added. “The U.S. Space Force is operating in accordance with the terms and conditions of its contracts.”

TWZ has also reached out to SpaceX for more information.

“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered,” Elon Musk, who is the founder and CEO of SpaceX among his other endeavors, had written on X on March 1 in response to a post about LUCAS making use of Starlink. “There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. This is not under SpaceX control.”

SpaceX’s networks and the LUCAS cost equation

Though described as a “monthly fee,” Reuters‘ report indicates that the U.S. military pays the $25,000 only once to employ a LUCAS drone. As the piece points out, the Pentagon reportedly argued that it should get to pay the lower $5,000 rate because it was only using the network to support LUCAS in timeframes measured in “minutes ​or hours.” This is also in line with Reuters describing the added cost as effectively approaching doubling the LUCAS drone’s $35,000 unit price.

The entire point of these one-way-attack drones is to offer a lower-cost complement to traditional exquisite long-range strike munitions. The Tomahawk cruise missile, the unit cost of a current-generation version of which is generally said to be in the $2 to $2.5 million range, is often used as a point of comparison, although they are far from equal in many ways. The underlying argument for LUCAS also relies on the drone being relatively cheap and easy to produce, as well as employ in large volumes. TWZ laid all of this out in a detailed case for the Pentagon acquiring exactly these kinds of drones in mass, which we published just three months before LUCAS was confirmed to be in operational service.

A combined price tag of some $60,000 (the unit cost plus one month’s fee to connect to Starshield, as reported by Reuters) would still be far less expensive than the cost of a single Tomahawk. Using Starlink/Starshield terminals to begin with, beyond their connectivity advantages, offers the benefit of miniaturized high-bandwidth hardware that is being produced at a commercial scale.

Plans to make LUCAS more autonomous through the addition of new swarming capabilities could affect future network connectivity requirements for the drones. This will be enabled by the integration of Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomy software, as you can read more about here.

Shield AI flies Hivemind AI Pilot on 6th Aircraft

As TWZ recently wrote:

“For the time being, the U.S. military demands a human operator is ‘in or on the loop’ for kinetic or otherwise potentially deadly actions, as opposed to letting autonomous weapons choose what targets to attack on their own without any extra authorization. While less controversial morally, this can also be a tactical hindrance, slowing the swarm’s potential and adding complexity and vulnerabilities to its operations. The debate around this choice will only get more heated as adversaries bypass this elected restriction in order to get an upper hand in future combat scenarios.”

“As we pointed out in our initial reporting on LUCAS’s emergence, the fact that some of the LUCAS drones already include miniature SATCOM terminals is very noteworthy. After all, ‘human in the loop’ swarming would not be possible without this form of communications at the beyond line-of-sight ranges these drones fly. At the same time, an entire swarm can be controlled in this manner, even if just a handful are equipped with SATCOM terminals. While a swarm can be mesh networked within line-of-sight, it has to relay all the important information back to an operator. By using some of the drones as SATCOM relay nodes, the entire swarm can be controlled remotely from most places on the planet.”

“Regardless, the Hivemind AI pilot will allow appropriately equipped LUCAS drones to perceive their environment, make decisions, and act autonomously without continuous human input. Unlike conventional autopilots tied to fixed flight paths, Hivemind is designed to dynamically adjust mission plans, react to unforeseen conditions, avoid obstacles, and carry out complex tasks with minimal operator oversight.”

An increase in fees to connect individual SATCOM terminals to SpaceX’s networks, as well as cost savings on hardware, might further push the Pentagon toward a hub-and-spoke mesh-like networking arrangement like the one described above. LUCAS drones could also be employed in other contexts where satellite connectivity throughout the course of a mission might not be required, including if used essentially as fire-and-forget missiles aimed at fixed target coordinates. A SATCOM terminal would not be necessary at all for this kind of mission set, although it would be beneficial.

There is also a question about the total bandwidth that might be required to support swarms of LUCAS drones. From Reuters‘ reporting today, the increased load on its networks was a central factor in SpaceX’s demands for higher fees after strikes on Iran began. That being said, as already mentioned, Starlink/Starshield terminals are already designed with relatively high bandwidth use in mind.

These same considerations will apply to current and future programs that rely heavily on SpaceX’s satellite communications networks.

Dependence on SpaceX and U.S. national security

Specific cost figures aside, the LUCAS drone’s reliance on Starlink/Starshield underscores SpaceX’s dominance in the satellite communications market globally. It also highlights how essential the company’s space-based networks have already become for the U.S. military. TWZ explored this reality in detail amid open feuding between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk last year. The relationship between Trump and Musk has since rebounded, with the latter accompanying the President on his recent state visit to China.

Reuters reported today that there are some 10,000 satellites in SpaceX’s constellation supporting Starlink and Starshield, and that this represents more than 60 percent of all satellites currently in orbit. The company’s space-based networks, far and away, dominate the commercial satellite communications space globally. Offerings from competitors like OneWeb and Amazon Leo are more limited in scale and scope.

Watch SpaceX deploy Starlink satellites into space

This is reflected in the U.S. government’s ever-growing use of Starlink/Starshield on aircraft, ships, and in settings on land. This includes integration on some very high-value assets, including the U.S. Marine Corps’ VH-92 Patriot presidential helicopters and U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. There has also been a steadily growing push to use these networks to support tactical operations, as now highlighted by the link to LUCAS. The U.S. military had first demonstrated the ability to use Starlink to transmit targeting data years ago.

The U.S. government’s increasing use of Starlink/Starshield has already prompted operational security questions, even just in the context of supporting day-to-day peacetime operations, as you can read more about here. Starshield is designed to be more secure to help address these concerns for government customers.

At the same time, heavy use of Starlink on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine, including as a means of guiding one-way attackers in the air and at sea, has further underscored potential risks associated with the use of the networks in tactical scenarios. SpaceX and CEO Musk have faced particularly significant criticism in the past over limiting some Ukrainian use of the network. Actions SpaceX took earlier this year to block unregistered Starlink terminals also had major consequences for Russian forces, which were sent scrambling to find alternatives to fill the massive resulting communications gaps.

What SpaceX might have been prepared to do if the Pentagon did not agree to pay increased fees to support LUCAS is unknown. We also do not know what kind of protections are currently baked into U.S. contracts with SpaceX to prevent government users from being suddenly disconnected without warning. Regardless, as noted earlier, the Pentagon could deploy LUCAS swarms with just a handful of drones equipped with terminals to relay the critical info needed to control the rest of the formation, and LUCAS can still be used as a fire-and-forget weapon without any beyond line-of-sight connectivity, although this would greatly curtail its flexibility and, in some cases, its efficacy.

As the Pentagon official noted to TWZ today, there is a push to explore commercial alternatives to Starlink/Starshield and promote further competition in this space. At the same time, part of the attractiveness of Starlink/Starshield for the U.S. government has been the relatively low costs and other benefits associated with leveraging such well-established networks, as well as the knowledge base that comes along with that pedigree. Just today, the U.S. Space Force announced it had finalized a new Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreement with SpaceX, valued at $2.29 billion, for work on the Space Data Network (SDN) Backbone program. The SDN is tied to work on new space-based sensing and targeting capabilities, particularly for missile defense, which could now feed into the Golden Dome initiative.

Beyond satellite communications, SpaceX is reportedly also now a critical player in U.S. military efforts to increasingly move air and ground moving target indicator (AMTI/GMTI) tasks into orbit.

On top of all this, SpaceX is also by far the top provider of space launch services globally, as well as other space-related services, including for the U.S. government. The core elements of Golden Dome, including the sustainment of planned batteries of space-based interceptors, require reliable, routine access to space at a frequency that only SpaceX can provide within budget constraints.

SpaceX looks set to remain a dominant force in this market space worldwide for the foreseeable future, and it continues to expand its presence, driven heavily by commercial demand. The company’s government contracts, though substantial, only account for around a fifth of its annual revenue, according to Reuters.

Despite the Pentagon’s response to the particulars of Reuters’ story today, being so heavily reliant on one provider for critical technologies still raises important questions not just for LUCAS, but for other efforts across the U.S. military that rely on robust and secure satellite communications connectivity.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

OSCAR winner Marcia Lucas has died from cancer aged 80.

Known as the secret weapon and unsung hero of Star Wars, Marcia died at her holiday home in Rancho Mirage, California.

The ex-wife of George Lucas, Marcia was best known for editing Star Wars and Return of the Jedi.

Marcia died on Wednesday evening, her family said.

In an emotional statement, they called the filmmaker a “trailblazer”.

A family member said: “Marcia was a force.”

“A true trailblazer for women in film and one of the most influential editors in cinematic history; she helped redefine what film editing could be and paved the way for generations of women who followed.”

She won an Academy Award in 1977 for Best Film Editing.

In 1969 she married George Lucas, who she had met while working on the documentary Journey to the Pacific.

Raised in North Hollywood, Marcia met her future husband while they were working as assistants for editor Verna Fields.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — The FBI searched the Virginia state Senate leader’s office on Wednesday as part of a corruption investigation, a person familiar with the matter said. Federal agents also were seen at the senator’s nearby cannabis business.

The search at Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas’s district office in Portsmouth comes after the Democrat helped lead the state’s recent redistricting effort.

The FBI said only that it was conducting a court-authorized search warrant in Portsmouth. The person who confirmed the FBI’s search was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Besides the search at Lucas’ office, agents in FBI T-shirts also went into the nearby Cannabis Outlet, which she opened in 2021. Several entrances to its cannabis store parking lot were blocked by unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights.

Lucas — a prominent backer of legalizing marijuana — has said the store sells legal hemp and CBD products. It has drawn scrutiny from local media amid allegations that some products were mislabeled.

Virginia has legalized pot possession, but retail sales of recreational marijuana remain illegal in the state.

A message seeking comment was left Wednesday on a cellphone for Lucas, who has been a state senator for 34 years.

State House Speaker Don Scott said he was deeply concerned by the FBI search.

“Right now, there is far more theatrics and speculation than actual information available to the public,” Scott, a Democrat, said in a statement, adding that more facts were needed “before anyone rushes to political conclusions.”

Gov. Abigail Spanberger declined to comment. Some other Virginia Democrats were quick to note that the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Trump.

The context “must be acknowledged,” U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott said in a social media post.

Last week, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey with making a threatening Instagram post against Trump, an accusation that Comey — who for nearly a decade has drawn the president’s ire — has denied. A separate mortgage fraud case, ultimately dismissed by a court, targeted Democratic New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who had brought a major civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his business.

The FBI and Justice Department have also provoked concerns among Democrats about ongoing election-related investigations, including the seizure by agents of ballots and other information from Fulton County, Ga.

Lucas has been a vocal leader of Virginia’s redistricting effort, which voters approved last month. A sign urging people to “vote yes” to “stop the MAGA power grab” still hung Wednesday on a fence separating her office’s parking lot from the parking for the cannabis shop.

Amid a national, state-by-state partisan redistricting fight kicked off by Trump’s desire to aid his fellow Republicans, Virginia voters OK’d a Democrat-backed constitutional amendment authorizing new U.S. House districts. The plan could help the party win up to four additional seats.

“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” Lucas said after the vote. Trump, meanwhile, denounced the results.

The state Supreme Court let the referendum proceed but has yet to rule whether the effort is legal. The court is considering an appeal of a lower-court judge’s ruling that the amendment is invalid because lawmakers violated procedural requirements.

Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump last year urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterms. California Democrats reciprocated, and redistricting efforts soon cascaded across states.

Lucas, 82, has been a figure in Virginia politics since the 1980s, when she became the first Black woman elected to a City Council seat in her native Portsmouth. She now is the first woman and first African American to serve as the body’s president pro tempore.

Earlier in life, she was the Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s first female shipfitter, according to her biography in the state library. The job entails making, installing and repairing sometimes enormous metal assemblies for vessels.

In recent years, she has been the chief executive of a Portsmouth business that runs residences, day programs and transportation for intellectually disabled adults.

Tucker, Breed and Peltz write for the Associated Press. AP writers Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Ky.; Jake Offenhartz in New York; and Claudia Lauder in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

May 6 (UPI) — The FBI raided the offices of and a cannabis business co-owned by L. Louise Lucas on Wednesday in Portsmouth, Va.

Lucas is a Virginia state senator, president pro tempore of the state Senate and a vocal leader of Virginia redistricting efforts.

Officials told The Washington Post that the investigation has to do with corruption and bribery allegations involving the business. Lucas was not arrested, and an FBI spokesperson said the investigation was ongoing.

Democrats called in question the motivation behind the raid; Lucas has often criticized President Donald Trump and was instrumental in the successful Virginia referendum in April to redraw the state’s congressional maps. However, The Washington Post, NBC News and The New York Times reported that sources familiar with the case claimed the investigation was opened during the Biden administration and has to do with the marijuana dispensary.

Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-Va., said that the raid “occurs in the broader context of President Trump’s repeated abuse of the Department of Justice to target his perceived political opponents.”

Don Scott, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, emphasized that Lucas has not been charged with anything.

“I am deeply concerned by today’s raid,” he said, WAVY-TV reported. “Given the politicization of this administration — an FBI led by Kash Patel and a Justice Department led by President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney — I think people should take this with a grain of salt and allow the facts to come out before jumping to conclusions,” he said.

Scott said he spoke with Lucas after the search, The New York Times reported.

“She basically said, ‘They’re not going to find anything there and I didn’t do anything wrong,’ ” he said. “She’s very upset and she’s very angry and she won’t back down.”

Lucas was elected to the Virginia General Assembly in 1991.

It will be more than a “Star Wars” bonanza when the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public Sept. 22. The highly anticipated $1-billion museum on Thursday announced about 20 inaugural exhibitions curated by George Lucas across more than 30 galleries — and only one is related to cinema, with a focus on “Star Wars” memorabilia, including large-scale vehicle installations, production designs, props and costumes.

The full scope of the 1,200-plus objects will only be revealed when guests step through the museum doors into more than 100,000 square feet of gallery space on the first day of fall.

The futuristic-looking 300,000-square-foot museum in L.A.’s Exposition Park was designed by Ma Yansong of Mad Architects with executive architect Stantec and includes 11 acres of park space that extend to the museum’s roof, designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. Co-founded by Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, the museum will rotate the famous filmmaker’s vast collection of narrative art, which contains objects not found in more traditional museums, including manga, comics and children’s tales. The idea is to present the myriad ways images are used to tell an endless variety of stories. Lucas has called his collection “the people’s art.”

Dorothea Lange, “Migrant Mother,” Nipomo, Calif., 1936. Gelatin silver print, 18 3/4 x 14 1/2 in.

(Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, PKY.1062)

Exhibitions currently on deck include a variety of themed shows such as one on the architecture of the building; one titled “Everyday Life,” dedicated to visual stories about “childhood, community, family, love, motherhood, play, school, sports and work”; another titled “Civic Life” featuring “artists’ portrayals of experience in the courthouse, the polling place, the political headquarters”; an exhibit titled “Narrative Forms” highlighting “narrative art across genres of adventure, fantasy, romance and science fiction” by artists including Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo, Ken Kelly, Georges Méliès, John C. Berkey and Jeffrey Catherine Jones; and children’s literature illustrations by Beatrix Potter, Leo Politi, E.H. Shepard and Jacob Lawrence.

George Hughes, “Home at Last,” cover for the Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 1, 1951. Oil on board, 30 x 24 in.

(Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, PKY.993. © SEPS by Curtis Licensing)

There will also be exhibitions devoted to the work of individual artists and genres such as comics and graphic stories from illustrators Mœbius, Marie Severin, Jack Kirby, Alison Bechdel, Jim Lee, Frank Miller and Rafael Navarro; illustrations and book covers by Frank Frazetta; the work of fairy tale and children’s illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith; the lush art of Maxfield Parrish; a selection of work by iconic American artist Norman Rockwell; selected works of Thomas Hart Benton; and early 20th century book illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

A news release about the inaugural exhibitions noted that they are drawn from the museum’s founding collection of more than 40,000 works.

“The exhibitions trace the evolution of human culture through storytelling, from ancient sculptures of gods and goddesses to Renaissance paintings to photographs, comics and modern cinema,” the release says. “Many exhibitions are organized by theme, focusing on myths about love, family, community and adventure that connect every generation. These shared stories, told over and over in many forms, bind us together and define our human experience.”

Ernie Barnes, “The Critic’s Corner,” 2007. Acrylic on canvas, 23 1/2 x 35 3/8 in.

(Matt Kroening / Lucas Museum of Narrative Art)

The road to the opening of the Lucas Museum has been winding. In 2017, Lucas first announced his decision to build his museum in L.A., with construction beginning the following year. The building was initially scheduled to open in 2021 — a goal that was pushed to 2023 due to COVID-19 pandemic-induced delays. From there, the debut was pushed to 2025, and finally 2026. The museum announced its final opening date last November.

Lucas’ role at his namesake museum has also not always been clear, and the museum’s development has been marked by a series of high-profile staff shakeups. The museum’s original director and chief executive, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, stepped down from her role in early 2025 after less than five years. She didn’t speak publicly about her departure but the museum issued a statement that her decision was based on a “new organizational design” that would split her job into two positions, with Lucas responsible for content direction.

Three months later, the museum laid off 15 full-time employees, a number of whom were from the education and public programming team. Seven part-time, on-call employees were also eliminated. The layoffs were described to The Times in harrowing terms by two employees who asked to remain anonymous.

In December — soon after the museum announced its opening date — news broke that chief curator Pilar Tompkins Rivas had stepped down from her role.

To date, no new chief curator has been named, but a rep for the museum wrote in an email that Lucas “is responsible for curatorial and content direction for the museum and continues to work closely with the curatorial team on his decades-long vision to celebrate storytelling and narrative art.”

FRISCO, Texas — Lucas Sanabria and Joseph Paintsil scored late in the first half after Petar Musa scored twice to give Dallas the lead, helping the Galaxy rally for a 2-2 draw on Saturday night.

Musa scored unassisted in the seventh minute to give Dallas a quick lead and then used assists from Christian Cappis and Logan Farrington to give Dallas a two-goal advantage in the 38th minute with his league-leading ninth of the season.

It was the first assist for Cappis after collecting two in 11 appearances last season as a rookie. Farrington’s third assist gives him 15 in 69 career matches.

Sanabria used assists from Paintsil and Justin Haak to cut it to 2-1 in the 43rd minute and Paintsil used assists from Gabriel Pec and defender Mauricio Cuevas to tie it three minutes into stoppage time.

Sanabria netted his second goal after scoring twice in 21 matches as a rookie last season. A hamstring injury sidelined Paintsil, who has a goal and two assists in four matches. Pec has four assists but has yet to score.

Michael Collodi turned away three shots in goal for Dallas (3-1-4).

JT Marcinkowski had three saves for the Galaxy (2-3-3).

The Galaxy lead the all-time series 37-35-13 and are 9-26-8 in Frisco.