As Israel investigates how a Hezbollah drone evaded its air defenses and killed four soldiers in an attack on a military base on Sunday, experts say the Iran-backed Lebanese group is hoping to overwhelm the Jewish state by pelting it with cheap, hard-to-detect suicide drones.
Relatively cheap to produce and easy to operate, drones are more difficult to detect and intercept by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, Orna Mizrahi, a senior research fellow at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, told CNN. This is mainly because they “are small in size, very light, with very low radar signature,” she said, adding that Israel’s radar systems will not always detect them the way they detect missiles, which are bigger.
Neither Hezbollah nor Israel have said which drones were used in Sunday’s attack. Hezbollah in a statement said it used “various drones, some used for the first time.”
But experts say they were likely the Mirsad variety, known in Iran as the Ababil drones. This drone is “a low and slow flying one-way attack drone with an estimated 40-50 kg (88-110 lbs) warhead,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC, told CNN.
Adding to the difficulty to track the drones is the fact they do not always have a fixed direction, Mizrahi said. “Drones can change direction along the flight,” she said, adding that “you cannot understand where they are going eventually,” or what they will hit.
Knowing that Israel is pouring funds into its anti-missile system, Hezbollah is adding drones to the equation, having identified it as “a weakness” for Israel, Mizrahi said.
Ben Taleblu noted that the drone attack and the rocket barrages on northern Israel over the weekend suggest that “despite reportedly loosing half of their arsenal, Hezbollah remains undeterred and is intent on continuing to prod for gaps in Israel’s layered air defenses.”
