At 6:12 a.m. on February 20, 2026, the radar operators aboard USS Lake Champlain noticed something unusual. What first appeared as a cluster of small airborne contacts at 68 nautical miles quickly multiplied. Twenty became fifty. Fifty became one hundred. Within ninety seconds, the display stabilized at exactly 200 targets, all traveling at roughly 100 knots, altitude 500 feet, converging on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
They were not conventional missiles. They were Shahed-136 loitering munitions—kamikaze drones—launched simultaneously from six sites along the Iranian coastline. Each carried approximately 50 kilograms of high explosive. Each cost an estimated $20,000 to manufacture. Tehran believed it had discovered the ultimate equalizer: overwhelm a carrier strike group with sheer quantity and force it to burn through interceptor missiles costing millions apiece.
