The Air Force wants industry to make an identical copy of the Shahed-136 drone, used by Russia in relentless attacks on Ukraine, to develop and test defenses against the Iranian-designed system.

The service wants to buy 16 of these Shahed look-alikes, with an option to buy 20 more later, as it pursues the “next generation” of counter-drone programs, according to a request for information posted last week.

“To support weapons development and integration of these weapon systems, the [U.S. government] requires that the Class 3 unmanned aerial target system be a 1:1 copy (form, fit and function) of a reverse engineered Shahed-136 suicide drone,” the solicitation said.

The drone must be an “exact replica” of the Iranian bird with the same profile, shape, payload capacity—about 70 to

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