BEIRUT: In mid-May, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah launched one of its deepest attacks into Israel, using an explosive drone that directly hit one of the Israeli Air Force’s most important surveillance systems.
This and other successful drone strikes have given the Iran-backed militant group another deadly option in an expected retaliation against Israel for its airstrike in Beirut last month, which killed Hezbollah's military commander, Fouad Shukur.
“It’s a threat that has to be taken seriously,” Fabian Hinz, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said of Hezbollah’s drone capabilities.
While Israel has built air defense systems, including the Iron Dome and David's Sling, to protect itself from Hezbollah's arsenal of rockets and missiles, less attention has been paid to the drone threat.
“And as a result there has been less effort to build defensive capabilities” against drones, Hinz said.
Drones, or UAVs, are unmanned aerial vehicles that can be operated remotely. Drones can enter, monitor, and attack enemy territory more discreetly than missiles and rockets.
Hezbollah claimed a success with its May drone strike, which targeted an airship used as part of Israel's missile defense system, at a base about 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Lebanese border.
The militants released footage showing what they said was their Ababil explosive drone flying towards the Sky Dew airship, and later released photographs of the downed aircraft.
The Israeli military confirmed that Hezbollah scored a direct hit.
“This attack reflects an improvement in the accuracy and ability to evade Israeli air defenses,” reads a report published by the Institute for National Security Studies, an independent think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University.
Since the near-daily firefight along the Lebanese-Israeli border began in early October, Hezbollah has increasingly used drones to bypass Israeli air defense systems and strike its military positions along the border, as well as deep inside Israel.
While Israel intercepted hundreds of drones from Lebanon during the Israel-Hamas war, its air defense systems are not airtight, an Israeli security official said. Drones are smaller and slower than missiles and rockets, making them harder to stop. This is especially true when they are launched from close to the border and require a shorter reaction time to intercept.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly in line with Israeli security restrictions, said that during this war, Israeli air defense systems have had to deal with more drones than ever before and Israel has responded by attacking the launch points.
A Hezbollah drone strike on an Israeli army base near the northern city of Nahariya on Tuesday wounded six people. One of the group’s deadliest drone strikes occurred in April, killing an Israeli soldier and wounding 13 others, as well as four civilians in the northern Israeli community of Arab Al-Aramsheh.
Hezbollah also sent surveillance drones that filmed vital facilities in northern Israel, including Haifa, its suburbs and the Ramat David air base, southeast of the coastal city.
While Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has boasted that the militant group can now manufacture its own drones, its strikes so far have relied primarily on Iranian-made Ababil and Shahed drones. It has also used a drone, at least once, that fires Russian-made S5 guided missiles.
Hezbollah’s surge in capabilities has come despite Israel killing some of its top drone experts.
The best-known figure was Shukur, who Israel says was responsible for most of Hezbollah's most advanced weaponry, including missiles, long-range rockets and drones.
In 2013, a senior Hezbollah official, Hassan Lakkis, considered one of its drone masterminds, was shot dead south of Beirut. The group blamed Israel. More recent strikes in Syria attributed to Israel have killed Iranian and Hezbollah drone experts, including an official in the aerospace division of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
In its early days, Hezbollah used less high-tech tactics, including paragliders, to attack behind enemy lines.
After Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after an 18-year occupation, Hezbollah began using Iranian-made drones and in 2004 sent its first Mirsad reconnaissance drone into Israeli airspace.
After the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, Lakkis, the designer of Hezbollah's drones, took over the program.
Hezbollah has increased its use of drones for reconnaissance and strikes during its involvement in the conflict in Syria. In 2022, while Lebanon was engaged in indirect negotiations to demarcate its maritime border with Israel, the group sent three drones over one of Israel’s largest gas facilities in the Mediterranean before they were shot down by Israel.
Hezbollah's drone program still receives significant support from Iran, and the UAVs are believed to be assembled by the militant group's experts in Lebanon.
“Since Iran has not been able to achieve air supremacy, it has resorted to this type of aircraft,” said retired Lebanese general and military expert Naji Malaaeb, referring to drones. He added that Russia has benefited from purchasing hundreds of Iranian Shahed drones to use in its war against Ukraine.
In February, Ukraine’s intelligence service claimed that Iranian and Hezbollah experts were training Russian troops to use Shahed-136 and Ababil-3 drones at an airbase in central Syria. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah have a military presence in Syria, where they have fought alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
In a 2022 speech, Nasrallah boasted that “we in Lebanon, and for a long time, have started producing drones.”
The Lebanese militant group is reportedly still relying on components from Western countries, which could pose an obstacle to mass production.
In mid-July, three people were arrested in Spain and one in Germany on suspicion of belonging to a network that supplied Hezbollah with components to build explosive drones to be used in attacks in northern Israel.
According to investigators, the Spanish companies involved, like others in Europe and around the world, purchased items including electronic guidance components, propulsion propellers, gasoline engines, more than 200 electric motors, and materials for the fuselage, wings, and other parts of the drone.
Authorities believe that Hezbollah may have built several hundred drones with these components. However, Iran remains Hezbollah's main supplier.
“The Israeli Air Force can launch missiles at different parts of Lebanon, and now Hezbollah has drones and missiles that can reach any area in Israel,” said Iranian political analyst and political science professor Emad Abshenass. He added that while the United States is arming its closest ally, Israel, Iran is doing the same by arming groups like Hezbollah.
