A week into the intense Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah’s weapons sites across Lebanon, the group’s arsenal of Iranian-designed drones still poses a threat, particularly if the fighting escalates.
Hezbollah has launched hundreds of drones into Israel over the past year and used other small unmanned aerial vehicles to knock out communications equipment and cameras along the border. While Israeli bombs have devastated the group’s leadership, including killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the head of its UAV programme, it’s not clear how significantly the strikes have eroded stockpiles it has spent years building.
The cheap, powerful weapons have exposed gaps in Israel’s sophisticated air defences and forced it to use costly munitions to shoot down devices that are often built from plastic or wood. They are also a significant threat to troops on the front in the event of an Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah back from the border and dismantle its military infrastructure.
“A wider war with Lebanon would stretch Israel’s air defences and make protecting manoeuvring troops from drones, especially FPVs, extremely challenging,” said Onn Fenig, chief executive officer of R2 Wireless, an Israeli electronic warfare startup. So-called first-person view drones, which don’t necessarily follow Iranian designs, can be rigged with explosives and target troops.
Israel killed Nasrallah in an airstrike in Beirut on Friday, and says it has eliminated all but one of the group’s 11 most-senior commanders. At least 800 people have been killed since the bombing campaign started on Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
The attacks could be a prelude to a ground incursion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has returning thousands of displaced Israelis to their homes in the north an official war objective, something that may only be possible if Hezbollah retreats or troops go in to create a buffer zone.
Hezbollah assembles the UAVs in underground facilities using Iranian-supplied parts and blueprints, according to Rotem Mey-Tal, chief executive officer of Asgard Systems Ltd., which develops technology for the Israeli military. Since the parts are produced and distributed from different sites, air strikes can only target individual stockpiles, he said.
To diminish the threat, “the tunnels must be cleared out from the inside and the Iranian supply chain to Lebanon must also be cut off,” Mey-Tal said. Even then, UAVs launched from further away can “reach the entire northern region and all parts of Israel by air.”
The attacks can also come from further afield, with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen launching so-called kamikaze drones at Israel. Yemen-based Houthi militants in July claimed a deadly drone strike on Tel Aviv. Israel said it was an Iranian-built Samad 3 drone re-purposed to fly longer distances.
Hezbollah has been experimenting with UAVs on various routes over the past year, including over the Mediterranean, to probe for weaknesses that could be exploited in a wider war. More than 500 have been launched by the group in that period, according to the Alma Research and Education Centre, a security think tank in northern Israel.
“They’re sometimes made of wood, plastic, even styrofoam,” said Boaz Shapira, a researcher at Alma. “Usually it’s very cheap, very basic, very easy to assemble.”
Explosive-packed UAVs can be launched in minutes, and tend to be harder to detect than the missiles that Israel’s Iron Dome and other aerial defence systems were designed to tackle. While they are often slow and inaccurate, when fired in great numbers they can confuse or overwhelm air defences.
The remnants of an Iranian-designed UAV scattered across a highway in northern Israel offered a glimpse of how they’re sometimes made. A wooden propeller is a throwback to the early days of aviation and the engine appeared to come from a firm that builds model aircraft for hobbyists, according to pictures aired by Israel’s state-run broadcaster in August.
Israel’s navy intercepted a UAV that crossed into the country’s offshore economic zone in the north on Monday, the military posted on X.
The drones are usually less lethal than missiles and most are shot down, an Israeli security official said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. Hezbollah has fired more than 9,000 rockets at Israel since Oct. 8, according to the Israeli government. It began the attacks a day after fighters from Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza swarmed into southern Israel.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are designated as terrorist organisations by the US.
Nine people, including soldiers and civilians, have been killed by UAVs in Israel in the last year, according to the Alma center. That compares with 41 deaths from anti-tank fire and rockets. Many other UAVs have exploded in abandoned towns along Israel’s border with Lebanon that were evacuated in October.
The mountainous topography in northern Israel and southern Lebanon make detection of drones more difficult. Hezbollah’s UAVs are often fired from ravines close to the border, impairing visibility and leaving little time to respond. Radar systems built to identify high-velocity metal objects often struggle to identify slow-moving, low-flying objects made of cheaper materials, according to Alma’s Shapira.
The threat underscores the cost asymmetry in drone warfare. A barrage of drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles fired by Iran in April cost more than $1 billion to intercept, according to one estimate. Iron Dome’s interceptors cost about $50,000 apiece.
Israel uses the Iron Dome, planes and helicopters to shoot down longer-range UAVs. To reduce costs, Israel’s military has said it is considering deploying anti-aircraft guns designed in the 1960s along its borders to shoot down drones.
The defence ministry and state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. are also working on a laser-based interception system known as Iron Beam. It is not expected to be operational before mid-2025 and isn’t effective during cloudy or foggy weather.
The Israeli military declined to comment on other systems in place.
