For years, the United States has eagerly accused other countries of "technology theft" and "reverse engineering." Yet recently, The Wall Street Journal proudly revealed a twist: the newest weapon the US military relies on in the Iranian battlefield is actually a "knockoff" copied straight from Iranian drone technology.
It’s like a top student constantly calling others cheaters, only to sneakily copy a struggling classmate’s answers during the test—and then boast about the grade.
For the first time in half a century, the United States has swallowed its pride to "copy" Iran.
The weapon that has the US military hooked is the "LUCAS" (FLM 136) suicide drone. Its origin is awkward: the US military dismantled and studied Iranian "Shahed" drones captured from the Ukrainian battlefield, and then reverse engineered and cloned them.
The Wall Street Journal itself admits this is the first time in nearly fifty years the US has openly reverse engineered another country’s military tech. The last time was during the Cold War, when they copied Soviet pontoon bridge designs. In other words, the American military-industrial complex has long boasted about being the "world’s best and most original."
Yet now in fighting Iran, it turns out their ace weapon is an "Iranian-designed, American-assembled" product. The embarrassment is undeniable.
Why does the US military copy this type of drone? The answer is simple: it’s cheap.
The 'LUCAS' costs only between $10,000 and $55,000 per unit, roughly on par with the original Iranian model. By contrast, the US military’s own Tomahawk cruise missiles cost over $2 million each. US officials describe it as delivering 'high cost-performance'—the 'Toyota Corolla of drones.' It’s not highly sophisticated, but it can be produced at scale.
Sounds clever, right? But the absurdity is clear: the country with the highest global military spending has to rely on 'saving money' to keep a war going. Even more ironically, this cost-saving strategy involves copying the adversary. What’s more paradoxical: this drone was originally developed for a possible future China-US conflict. War games showed the US ammo stockpile might not last two weeks. Yet oddly, they first tested it on Iran.
Is the copied 'ace' drone really that formidable? Even experts have doubts.
Although US media hype its impressive performance in Iran, praising its accurate strikes on various targets, American experts are working hard to douse this enthusiasm with skepticism.
An electronic warfare expert explains that in Iran, GPS jamming is weak, so these drones perform well. But in the complex battlefield environment surrounding China, strong signal interference can instantly turn them into "headless flies"—either crashing or flying erratically.
Some critics argue the US military still lacks enough low-cost anti-drone systems. It struggles to defend even against small drones backed by Iran. And those so-called "fully autonomous combat" unmanned vessels remain years away.
To put it bluntly: copying homework might get by against an average student like Iran, but face a top student like China, and the flaws quickly show.
A war exposes the US military-industrial complex as little more than a "paper tiger."
The most ironic part of all this isn’t the US "copying," but its smug self-satisfaction after doing so.
The Trump administration aggressively pushed for "defense procurement reform," streamlining processes and promising rapid production of low-cost weapons. Yet the reality reveals a bloated, sluggish system. Even former officials involved in development concede, "Many countries have long mastered this type of low-cost precision strike technology; the problem is the United States hasn't invested a single dollar in these systems."
This war acts like a revealing mirror, exposing the awkwardness of the US military-industrial complex: costly high-tech arsenals can quickly deplete in a war of attrition, while the desperately needed low-cost, mass-produced equipment ends up relying on "copying" adversaries.
The takeaway from so-called "American innovation" is the anxiety of being a "paper tiger": a regional conflict has already exposed gaps in reserves and systemic flaws. When true "great power competition" arrives, will this "tiger" collapse with a single poke?
Therefore, instead of branding this US military effort as "innovation," it is more accurately described as a forced "imitation show" compelled by harsh realities.
Beacon Institute
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Paris's mercury shot up like a rocket with no brakes in June, blowing past 44°C. The Louvre cut its opening hours and the Eiffel Tower baked in the heat. More than 3,000 primary and secondary schools were forced to close.
Meanwhile, at Paris's funeral homes, phones rang every few minutes, with each caller asking the same question: "Is there any space left for another body?"
Funeral home director Zouhaeir Hertelli's phone would not stop ringing. "We have no solution to offer them," he said, "We're completely full." To free up space, he had to transport some bodies to Chartres, 80 kilometers away. He even applied to the government for permission to place temporary refrigerated containers outside the funeral home. That application is still under review.
The numbers from France's public health agency are even more disheartening. In just three days, from June 23 to 25, excess deaths nationwide totaled around 1,000. June 23 set a new record for the highest temperature since France began keeping weather records, surpassing even the 2003 heatwave of the century that killed 15,000 people.
It was at this exact moment that France's Minister for Ecological Transition, Monique Barbut, stepped forward.
Barbut spoke publicly at the Paris Air Quality Monitoring Center on June 26. She said she was "horrified" to hear public calls for widespread air conditioning. Air conditioning, she argued, was never a fundamental solution to the climate crisis. Mass installation of AC units could neither curb forest fires nor save wildlife populations. "This is not adaption to global warming," she said, "this is an emergency measure."
Her words landed on the French public like a bucket of cold water poured over their heads in 40-degree heat. Well, except the water was scalding hot.
Public fury ignited instantly. Fewer than 25% of French households have air conditioning. Public schools have AC coverage below 7%, and countless nursing homes and community clinics still lack even basic cooling equipment. Emergency room temperatures have long hovered near 40°C, leaving critically ill patients with no way to recover safely. For elderly people living alone, low-income families, and tenants crammed into old Haussmann-era buildings, air conditioning isn't a luxury. It's the last line of defense keeping them alive.
But the real spectacle was yet to come.
Members of the public went digging and found that the government office buildings housing Minister Barbut's office, the Séquoia Tower and La Défense's Grande Arche, were already fully equipped with central air conditioning. She lectured at climate summits about carbon-neutral emissions targets from a cooled office. At the same time, she called ordinary citizens' desire for air conditioning "horrifying". She claimed AC was merely an "emergency measure" rather than a long-term adaptation strategy, yet let her own cool breeze become an everyday fixture.
A textbook definition of a "double standard." Long-term ecological goals are meant to constrain ordinary people, while immediate comfort is reserved for oneself.
The public backlash came fast and hard. Within just two days, France's health authorities scrambled to finalize a procurement plan, allocating 30,000 air conditioning units on a priority basis to public hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. Paris's city government simultaneously procured over a thousand cooling units. This policy U-turn resembled an actor caught off guard, frantically fixing their makeup after being slapped on stage. Except the price of this particular performance was over a thousand lives already lost.
The absurdity of this whole episode isn't that environmental ideals are inherently wrong. The arguments from France's Green Party and left-wing camp aren't entirely without merit. Old buildings have poor insulation, AC condenser units worsen the urban heat island effect, and cooling cities requires ecological solutions rather than simply relying on electric cooling. These are all genuine technical challenges.
The problem arises when "long-term planning" is invoked to dismiss the most urgent needs of ordinary people right now. That's when environmentalism stops being public policy and becomes class rhetoric instead.
The long-standing "consensus" in French society, that urban cooling should rely on ecological retrofitting rather than air conditioning, is at its core a consensus of the propertied class. Homeowners who can afford exterior wall insulation upgrades, families with the resources to escape to summer retreats, and officials with the power to enjoy central air conditioning in their offices can of course afford to speak elegantly about "ecological adaptation."
But for tenants crammed into uninsulated old stone buildings, elderly people living alone in retirement, or medical staff toughing it out in emergency rooms with nothing but reflective sun shields and aging fans, the phrase "long-term planning" is just another way of saying, "you'll just have to keep enduring it."
This is the truth behind the "cooling class." Cool air has a class hierarchy, and so does environmentalism.
Nearly 15,000 people in France died from heat-related causes in the 2003 heatwave, most of them elderly people living alone. The government at the time was criticized for its sluggish response and disregard for the vulnerable. Twenty-three years later, history has repeated itself almost exactly. The only difference is that the government's excuse has been upgraded from "negligence" to "environmentalism." From funeral homes overflowing to a minister's air-conditioned office, from 1,000 excess deaths to air conditioning being called "shocking," the distance between these two realities is merely a few floors' worth of height. Yet it separates two entirely different Frances.
The cool breeze still flows through Minister Barbut's office. Meanwhile, at the Paris funeral home, Hertelli is still waiting for approval on that refrigerated container. "Imagine your father's or mother's body has begun to decompose," he said, "and we're unable to take care of it, and we have no solution to offer them."
Perhaps that sentence is the most honest confession to emerge from this entire heatwave. When environmental slogans are used to mask governance failures, and when long-term planning is used to dodge questions of life and death happening right now, so-called "climate adaptation" becomes just another sophisticated way of shirking responsibility.
The real double standard was never as simple as "saying one thing and doing another." It's a system that grants some people the permanent right to talk about "the future," while ensuring others never get to see "the present."
Paris's summer still has a long way to go. But for some, there won't be a next summer.
