BEIRUT (news agencies) — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group launched one of its deepest strikes into Israel in mid-May, using an explosive drone that scored a direct hit on one of Israel’s most significant air force surveillance systems.
This and other successful drone attacks have given the Iranian-backed militant group another deadly option for an expected retaliation against Israel for its airstrike in Beirut last month that killed top Hezbollah military commander Fouad Shukur.
“It is a threat that has to be taken seriously,” Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said of Hezbollah’s drone capability.
While Israel has built air defense systems, including the Iron Dome and David’s Sling to guard against Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal, there has been less focus on 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 aircraft that can be operated from afar. Drones can enter, surveil and attack enemy territory more discreetly than missiles and rockets.
Hezbollah proclaimed the success of its May drone strike, which targeted a blimp used as part of Israel’s missile defense system at a base about 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the Lebanon border.
The militants released footage showing what they said was their explosive Ababil drone flying toward the Sky Dew blimp, and later released photographs of the downed aircraft.
Israel’s military confirmed Hezbollah scored a direct hit.
“This attack reflects an improvement in accuracy and the ability to evade Israeli air defenses,” said a report released by the Institute for National Security Studies, an independent think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University.
Since the near daily exchange of fire along the Lebanon-Israel border began in early October, Hezbollah has used drones more to bypass Israeli air defense systems and strike its military posts along the border, as well as deep inside Israel.
While Israel has intercepted hundreds of drones from Lebanon during the Israel-Hamas war, its air defense systems are not hermetic, an Israeli security official said. Drones are smaller and slower than missiles and rockets, therefore harder to stop. That’s 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 Israeli air defense systems have had to contend with more drones during this war than ever before, and Israel responded by attacking launch points.
On Tuesday, a Hezbollah drone attack on an Israeli army base near the northern city of Nahariya wounded six people. One of the group’s bloodiest drone attacks was in April, killing one Israeli soldier and wounding 13 others plus four civilians in the northern Israeli community of Arab al-Aramsheh.
Hezbollah also sent surveillance drones that filmed vital facilities in Israel’s north, including in Haifa, its suburbs and the Ramat David Airbase, southeast of the coastal city.
While Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has boasted the militant group can now manufacture its own drones, its attacks so far have mainly relied 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 increasing capabilities have come despite Israel killing some of its most important drone experts.
The most high-profile was Shukur, who Israel said was responsible for most of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including missiles, long-range rockets and drones.
In 2013, a senior Hezbollah operative, 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 killed Iranian and Hezbollah drone experts, including an official with the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division.
In its early days, Hezbollah used lower-tech tactics, including paragliders, to attack behind enemy lines.
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