No Iron Dome for Drones: IDF Seeks Answers to Growing Hezbollah Threat
History was made in the northern Sinai Peninsula town of Baluza on May 1, 1969. Operations Sgt. Yariv Geva detected an Egyptian MiG 21 approaching his Hawk anti-aircraft missile battery. Geva told the battery's operations officer, Lt. Yair Tamir, of the incoming strike, and they requested permission to intercept the Egyptian plane. It was the Hawk defense system's first interception.
It would have been hard for Geva and Tamir to imagine that 55 years after that incident, which became part of the Israeli military's air defense narrative, hundreds of anti-air combat soldiers would have to stave off hordes of hostile craft launched into Israel almost nonstop for eight months straight.
Since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip, thousands of drones and cruise missiles have been launched at Israeli territory from various directions. The military appears to have not yet found the best way to prevent the Hezbollah drone attacks that are sowing devastation in the north and have driven tens of thousands of residents from their homes.
According to the military, the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 was when Iran and Hezbollah realized that they needed a strategic change against a sophisticated military. Over a decade ago, Tehran started developing advanced cruise missiles and drones for attacks and intelligence gathering. Its goal was to prevent Israel from having a monopoly on fighting inside enemy territory – even with countries without a joint border – and to provide its proxies in the Middle East, particularly Hezbollah, with similar capabilities.
Iran has succeeded in creating a multifront threat around Israel by launching drones from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza and its own soil. Hezbollah's use of drones has forced the military to change the way the campaign is being directed, which took shape over the course of years.
An aircraft puts out a fire in the Galilee in northern Israel last week.Credit: AFP
With easily obtainable technology and accurate weapons, Hezbollah has gained intelligence-gathering and precision-attack capabilities that threaten the military and vital infrastructure. Beyond spreading alarm among residents in the north, the drones have turned Hezbollah into a military organization that is fighting a regular army.
In 2008, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah eulogized Imad Mughniyeh, a top leader in the organization who was assassinated in Damascus. In his speech, he said that Mughniyeh had been in charge of developing Hezbollah's advanced abilities, which he said were similar to those used by regular armies.
A war without a front
"The Second Lebanon War was a significant learning experience for both sides and to those who watched it from afar," wrote Brig. Gen. Itai Brun in an article published last March in the journal Between the Poles. Bron was appointed head of Military Intelligence's research division during the current war because of Brig. Gen. Amit Saar's retirement for health reasons. In his article, Brun detailed the implications of the military's approach to war of Iran's entering the club of countries with precision capabilities.
He wrote that Hezbollah's mass acquisition of precision weapons like drones "deprived Israel of its classic defense approach, which was mainly based on territorial defense, geographic and strategic depth and on preventing terrorism through the use of combat soldiers on the ground, fences and physical obstacle." This created "a dangerous potential for a war without a front line," he added.
Hezbollah's current capabilities, although not as advanced as Israel's, undermine the balance between Israel's strategic strength and that of its enemies. Over the past decade, Hezbollah has accumulated substantial experience in operating drones, including in the Syrian Civil War, where its members fought beside the Russians and Iranians helping President Bashar Assad's regime. The Houthis in Yemen and the pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq also practiced drone operations. Iran supplied Russia with advanced drones to attack Ukraine in the war it launched in February 2022.
The experience gained has allowed Hezbollah to challenge Israel's air defenses. "Hezbollah will renounce the approach of inaccurate rocket and missile attacks on civilians in cities in favor of attacking civilian economic infrastructure and military targets with precision weapons," Brun wrote.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a televised speech this week.Credit: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters
Until the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah mainly used inaccurate missiles that, fired from 200 kilometers away and with a five percent deviation from its course, could miss a target the size of Kfar Sava. Improving missile accuracy and using drones have allowed it to attain a high precision rate. "Improving precision has several meanings," wrote Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav in an article with the headline "Iran everywhere: A war without a front," published in June 2021 on the Israel Defense Forces site.
Kochav, a former Air Defense Command commander and military spokesman, said Nasrallah had accelerated his threat to "vital Israeli infrastructure like gas rigs and electricity facilities."
Kochav said Hezbollah had the "potential to damage military capabilities and strategic infrastructure under a facade of preserving international standards of preventing harm to civilians."
He added: "Precision attacks combined with massive firing and drones and cruise missiles for attacking from surprising directions – all these create a real threat to the missile defense system."
'We've shot down our own'
At this point, the military is no longer afraid to admit that Israel has no comprehensive solution for almost daily drone launches. Since the start of the war, the military has shot down hundreds of attack and intelligence drones. But the interception rate is nowhere near as high as the rate of downed rockets launched from Gaza, which the Israeli public has gotten used to since the introduction of Iron Dome.
The military is trying to deal with the drone threat on multiple levels: detection, warning and interception. The Air Defense Command is still working on an ideal solution to these emerging challenges. "In the end, a soldier sitting in an Air Force control room sees a suspicious aerial object and has to decide within seconds whether it is hostile, a bird, civilian aircraft or Israeli aircraft," says an officer in a key air defense post on the northern front, "and then lock in on it, warn of the threat, choose how to intercept it, and verify that the target is down."
Damage from a rocket in Kiryat Shmona last month.Credit: Gil Eliahu
The officer adds, "We've had quite a few cases in which we've launched interceptors at birds. A large crane flying in a combat zone often has a radar signature like that of Hezbollah drones. Sometimes a military unit decides to launch a drone without notification. We've also shot down our own drones."
Senior air defense officers note another challenge in detecting drones. There are extensive areas along the northern border where Hezbollah holds commanding positions above communities and bases in Israel, such as in Metula. One senior officer says that Hezbollah has displayed a continuous learning curve since the start of the war and knows in what ways Israeli drones have difficulty in detecting Hezbollah's. Hezbollah also sends drones through hidden dry streambeds from which they emerge to strike, making it very difficult to shoot them down.
Unlike rockets, which radar can quickly detect and calculate its course, a drone is able to hover, and operators choose the target during flight. It's therefore very difficult to predict where it will strike. To try and meet this complex threat, the military has increased radar sensitivity to the highest level. This has resulted in many cases of false alarms that have made the lives of residents in the north even more intolerable.
The video of Haifa Port released by Hezbollah.
The military has been left struggling to adjust its warning capabilities. Because of the drones' hovering ability and the large area they can move around before striking a target, the Home Front Command has been forced to activate sirens in multiple communities every time an infiltration is detected. The military decided that despite the disturbance and harm to residents' sense of security, the repeated alarms will continue until a better solution is found. When an intelligence drone – not an attack one – enters Israel's airspace, the military often chooses not to intercept it or to only do so as it returns to Lebanon. But in these cases, too, sirens are activated, panicking residents.
"Hezbollah's knowledge of how to operate drones and its firepower quite impressively," one senior defense source says. This week, the group released a video taken by an intelligence drone that filmed strategic sites in Haifa. The military was unaware of the drone infiltration at the time. "Ultimately, this was a small drone, the kind of drone to which a GoPro is attached, and its sole task is to collect intelligence and locate bases and soldiers' assembly areas," says the source. "These drones broadcast back to Hezbollah and when they identify a worthy target for a strike, they send an attack drone to that location."
As for the infiltration over Haifa, the source says, "I cannot say if there was an operational decision not to shoot it down and when exactly we learned about its presence in Israel's skies. But it's not always correct to launch an interceptor over a city like Haifa in order to shoot down a GoPro. There are a lot of considerations. The fact that we're entering summer makes it necessary to take into account that interceptions sometimes cause fires that do more damage than the drone. Obviously, in cases where there is no threat to property or lives."
Israel's air defense system is multilayered, from Iron Dome through David's Sling to the Arrow, which can counter long-range ballistic missiles. Since the outbreak of the current war, all these layers have scored successful interceptions. However, the defense source says that attack helicopters have actually turned out to be the best tool for shooting down drones because they can easily maneuver to the best position.
The military has recently formed another Iron Dome regular battalion as part of the effort to improve air defenses. Small radars linked to machine guns have also entered service. But there is no guarantee that this solution will be beneficial against the drone threat. "Hezbollah is increasingly using drones for several reasons," says another senior defense source.
"They have pulled back several kilometers because of IDF strikes. They're apparently worried about launching inaccurate long-range missiles to avoid hitting civilians, which would draw a severe Israeli response and drag both sides into war. They also understand that ultimately, every strike on a drone is one less Iron Dome interception missile the day a general war breaks out."
A burned road sign on the way to Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.Credit: Rami Shllush
The widespread evacuation of residents from near the northern border has made it possible for Hezbollah to see empty communities, into which soldiers have entered, as legitimate targets. "We didn't know how to create adequate security for communities [in the north] at first because of the concern of infiltration into Israeli territory, like what happened in the south," says a third senior defense source. "It was therefore decided to evacuate [the area], but no one dreamed of a period of eight months – and we still can't see the end."
The source says he has no delusions about Hezbollah's future intentions. "Hezbollah's array of weapons is on high alert for war," he says. "Hezbollah is prepared for a long war and understands the change in the situation. It is therefore operating with a correct economy of fire against Israel. It is ready for a war of attrition and is operating according to an organized plan of firing against us."