Hezbollah’s small but deadly drones changing the game in war with Israel

LONDON – Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon, continues despite last week’s agreement between the governments of Israel and Lebanon on a supposed “lasting peace and security” brokered by the United States.

The Israeli military claimed on June 29 that it had destroyed a 200m-long underground tunnel allegedly used by Hezbollah fighters to infiltrate into Israel. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem responded by vowing to fight on, rejecting any agreement with Israel as “humiliating, shameful, and a surrender of sovereignty”.

Yet, although Israel’s military superiority is not in doubt – Israeli troops occupy most of southern Lebanon – the Jewish state was caught unprepared by the rapid emergence of a new weapon it did not foresee: a tiny explosive drone connected to a spool of fibre-optic cable that costs next to nothing but yet has taken the lives of scores of Israeli soldiers. This is a classic example of how a militia can still take on a famously tech-savvy military.

Hezbollah used to be regarded as Iran’s most potent proxy. At one point, the militia’s arsenal – and particularly its missile capabilities – were seen as more powerful than those of the region’s national Arab armies.

More recently, however, Hezbollah came to be dismissed throughout the Middle East as a busted flush.

In a lightning offensive across southern Lebanon in 2024, Israel wiped out most of Hezbollah’s capabilities. It killed thousands of its fighters, including Hassan Nasrallah, the top leader, once regarded as the Middle East’s canniest powerbroker. The fall of then President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria also severed the overland supply route from Iran on which Hezbollah depended.

Hezbollah’s speedy destruction seemed to confirm the wisdom of decades of Israeli heavy investment in sophisticated intelligence-gathering capabilities and other cutting-edge technologies.

When the Israelis pounced in 2024, they not only knew the precise coordinates of every important Hezbollah command post and munition dump, but also had in place a sophisticated air defence system capable of intercepting and destroying almost all Hezbollah missiles.

Hezbollah is now striking back with a weapon that, instead of trying to compete with Israel’s technological superiority, seeks to bypass Israeli technology altogether. Hezbollah’s preferred new weapon consists of a small drone attached to a thin fibre and carrying an explosive charge no heavier than a supermarket shopping bag.

The drone is made of various plastic mouldings, materials that evade detection by Israel’s radar systems. It is guided to its target by a fibre-optic cable which can spool up to 30km in length. This avoids jamming by Israel’s sophisticated electronic warfare devices. Although the explosives carried by such drones are small in size, they can inflict deadly damage.

Since March, such so-called first-person-view (FPV) drones, which rely on parts manufactured around the world and can be assembled in a shed at a cost of only a few hundred dollars each, were responsible for more than a third of the Israeli army’s fatalities in Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s FPV drones appear to be immune to the electronic defences on which Israel spent a generation and a fortune to build, and impervious to the pioneering so-called Trophy defence system Israel installed on its Merkava tanks.

They fly straight into tank turrets and past Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence batteries and explode within metres of casualty-evacuation helicopters, thereby not only unsettling Israeli military deployments but also exposing Israel’s logistical arrangements to unprecedented dangers.

The FPV drones have restored to the Iranian-backed militia one thing that was stripped away in the past two years: the ability to impose a continuous, heavy and unanswerable cost on Israel’s occupying army.

As a rule, the Israeli authorities impose a blanket media ban on reporting about the performance of weapons during warfare. Discussions about new weapons or tactics percolate into the public only after fighting is over.

So, when Hezbollah started deploying its FPV drones in March, this was largely ignored by what is otherwise a very noisy Israeli media landscape.

But unusually, this customary silence has now been broken, with many Israeli news outlets commenting on the appearance of the new drone threat.

Ynet, Israel’s most influential news portal, has quoted local analysts and defence specialists claiming that Hezbollah’s use of explosive drones represents Israel’s “deadliest threat on the battlefield in the past two years”.

In an unprecedented move, the chief spokesperson for the Israeli military also cleared for publication details about how Hezbollah’s FPV drones recently killed some Israeli soldiers.

Traditionally, details about the circumstances that lead to the killing of soldiers are never published, out of deference to the bereaved families. Not this time, however.

One explanation for the unusual openness of the Israeli public discussion is that the matter can no longer be ignored, since Hezbollah is now flooding cyberspace with short video clips showing the impact of its FPV drones on a variety of Israeli targets, including, more recently, an Iron Dome air defence installation.

It may also suit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to draw attention to the new threat from Hezbollah. He is under pressure from the US to halt his military offensive in Lebanon and is also facing heavy domestic criticism for exaggerating claims that Hezbollah had “ceased to exist”.

By allowing a debate about the impact of Hezbollah’s new weapon, Netanyahu may be hoping to persuade the Israeli public and officials in the Trump administration in Washington that Israel has no choice but to continue fighting.

The increasingly open discussion about the challenge from Hezbollah’s new drones carries a number of dangers for Israel.

Israeli citizens, particularly those in the northern parts of the country adjacent to the border with Lebanon, are demanding action against the new drones. Still, at least for the moment, no such answers are forthcoming.

An unnamed Israeli army colonel described as head of the country’s “Borders Exposure Department” was interviewed on Israeli media about Israel’s measures. All he could say was that Israeli experts are “looking at the problem”.

For Hezbollah, the FPV drone is no longer just a weapon – it is now a negotiating position in its confrontation against Israel, one that has given the organisation renewed political clout.

Either way, the war in Lebanon seems set to continue. And a drone that started as a mere toy is changing the face of warfare.