A routine Saturday fishing trip off Pensacola Beach turned into something else entirely when a Hot Spot Fishing Charters crew hauled a large unmanned aircraft out of the Gulf of Mexico. Authorities recovered the drone later that same day, according to local news station WEAR-TV.
The recovered drone closely resembles a clone of the Iranian Shahed-136 one-way attack weapon, specifically the U.S. military’s 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.
An 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.
“I can confirm that we were doing a test and the test article went down,” 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.
“The drone was found by local charter Capt. Daniel Arsenault with Hot Spots Charters,” said Green, who is also an aviation photographer whose work can be found at Aquatic Charlie on social media. “He 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.”
“Arsenault 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,”
Green added. He did not know which agency.
The Gulf stretch where this happened is not random open water. Eglin Air Force Base, one of the largest military test ranges in the United States, manages restricted airspace and offshore test zones along this corridor. The base is also closely associated with testing advanced weapons platforms, including hypersonic missiles.
The Eglin host unit at the installation is the 96th Test Wing, which is the “test and evaluation center for Air Force air-delivered weapons, navigation and guidance systems, command and control systems, and Air Force Special Operations Command systems,” according to the wing’s homepage.
It oversees the massive Eglin Gulf Test Range, which “provides 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.
What the Charter Found
Hot Spot Fishing Charters runs six- to eight-hour offshore trips, typically reaching 15 to 30 miles from Pensacola Beach.
On a Saturday six-hour trip, the crew recovered what was described as “a large drone pulled from Gulf waters.” Authorities arrived and retrieved the aircraft the same day.
Sources: yahoo!news; TheWar Zone