CENTCOM launches Task Force Falcon Strike to integrate aerial and maritime one-way attack drones

U.S. Central Command said it is establishing Task Force Falcon Strike, a new unit that will use one-way attack drones in the air and at sea and will include U.S. and regional personnel, marking a step beyond an earlier U.S.-run drone squadron in the Middle East.

In an Aug. 14 article published by War.gov and credited to CENTCOM, the command said it announced a day earlier that it was launching efforts to establish Falcon Strike. CENTCOM described the unit as “the first multidomain, multinational attack drone task force,” while saying it has begun consultations and sent official invitations to regional partners. The announcement did not name any partner countries and did not say any had formally joined.

CENTCOM said Task Force Falcon Strike “will employ one-way attack drones consisting of unmanned systems from above, on and below the sea” and that they will be “operated by military support staff from the United States and regional partners.” Personnel from U.S. Special Operations Command Central, the special operations command for the region known as SOCCENT, will lead the task force’s staff of U.S. and regional representatives, according to the announcement.

The new unit is meant to build on Task Force Scorpion Strike, which CENTCOM has described as the U.S. military’s first dedicated one-way attack drone squadron in the Middle East. Scorpion Strike was established in December 2025, putting the Falcon Strike announcement nine months later and underscoring CENTCOM’s move from a U.S.-run squadron toward a more formal regional structure spanning multiple domains.

CENTCOM has previously tied Scorpion Strike to several milestones in its use of attack drones in the region. The command has said the unit carried out the first launch of an aerial attack drone from a U.S. Navy warship in December 2025. CENTCOM also said Scorpion Strike used low-cost one-way attack drones in combat for the first time during Operation Epic Fury, which began Feb. 28, 2026. In July, CENTCOM publicly said multiple one-way attack surface drones struck a submarine and ship-maintenance facility at Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base.

Those developments give Falcon Strike significance less as a sudden new capability than as an organizational expansion of systems CENTCOM says it has already used across more than one domain. The notable change in this announcement is the structure: a task force that CENTCOM says will combine aerial and maritime one-way attack drones while bringing in regional personnel under a SOCCENT-led staff.

“Task Force Falcon Strike will expand on Scorpion Strike’s success given the tremendous innovation happening among our regional allies and partners,” Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, said in the release. “Integrating and deploying our new capabilities together will help us rapidly realize the new possibilities that are on the horizon.”