TEL AVIV — Israeli troops are confronting a new threat in their fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon: camera-equipped explosive drones that feed live video back to their operators via a fiber-optic tether to evade detection and traditional signal-jamming defenses.
The unmanned, first-person-view vehicles, cheap to build from commercially available components, have helped the militants rearm despite the loss of a sponsor in Syria and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Since Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire last month, the weapons have killed at least four Israeli personnel.
“Your drones are suffocating the occupying entity and terrifying the tyrants of the earth,” Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem told fighters on Tuesday.
Israeli officials, who followed the use of fiber-optic drones in the Russia-Ukraine war, have acknowledged the challenge. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this month he had “ordered the establishment of a special project to thwart the drone threat.”
“It will take time,” he said in a video posted to social media, “but we are on it.”
The Israel Defense Forces is establishing a factory to produce its own “suicide drones,” Galatz military radio reported Tuesday. Within two months, officials estimate, it will produce thousands of the weapons per month, with plans to scale up to tens of thousands monthly.
Hezbollah is increasingly relying on the low-cost, locally manufactured drones “to overcome supply challenges” since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al Assad in 2024, a Hezbollah official told The Washington Post. The weapons, built with easily sourced electronics and 3D printing technology for $300 to $400 per unit, proved their value in the Russia-Ukraine war against “the advanced capabilities of major militaries,” the official said.
Hezbollah has deployed drones in combat at least as far back as the Syrian civil war, when the militants backed Assad. In their 2024 war with Israel, they used them to surveil and to attack. The group has relied on Iran, its chief sponsor, for much of its arsenal, but in recent years has touted its own production capacity.
“Today, we in Lebanon, and for a long time, have begun manufacturing drones,” Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah said in 2022. He made the claim again in 2024 before he was killed in an Israeli airstrike that September.
The IDF estimates Hezbollah has approximately 100 drone operators dispersed across Southern Lebanon. The army believes the militants used the ceasefire from November 2024 to March to purchase and build the weapons and train their operators.
Fighting resumed at the end of February, when a U.S.-Israeli strike killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah fired projectiles at Israel in response. The sides agreed to another ceasefire last month but have continued to exchange fire.
Since the truce took effect April 17, Hezbollah has launched around 230 projectiles and more than 100 explosive drones at Israeli troops, according to the IDF. The Israeli Air Force, meanwhile, has struck more than 1,100 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and “eliminated” more than 350 “terrorists.”
At least six soldiers and security personnel have been killed, four of them by drones. Most recently, Command Sgt. Maj. Alexander Glovanyov, 47, a heavy transport vehicle driver, was killed Sunday by an explosive drone near the Israel-Lebanon border.
The drones are “a threat that we are still adapting to,” an Israeli military official told journalists last month. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operations.
“We are using and deploying all kinds of technologies,” the official said. “There’s nothing that you can do that will give 100 percent protection.”
Yehoshua Kalisky, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, cautioned perspective.
“While drones pose a real danger and can be lethal, they aren’t a game changer,” he said. “They are, however, a major nuisance.”
The small, speedy weapons — they can measure less than a meter across and can fly at 250 mph — are difficult to detect and intercept. With no pilot on board, they can make sharp turns through uneven terrain. And with no metal parts, their radar signature is minimal.
The communication between operator and drone is transmitted through the optical fiber, a glass thread the thickness of a human hair, wound on a spool, that can extend for miles. “You cannot intercept any data because everything remains within the fiber,” Kalisky said.
The military official said “Hezbollah is learning fast.” “what they are doing now — because each drone has very little munitions, like a small grenade — they are trying to coordinate attacks.”
Ukraine developed the “DIY-style” weapons as a “practical solution” against Russia’s advanced electronic warfare capabilities, said Onn Fenig, CEO of the U.S.-Israeli tech company R2 Wireless. Russia had been using radio frequency jamming to counter traditional first-person-view drones. Fenig’s company, which identifies wireless drone threats, has worked with Ukrainian and other forces.
“These drones are super-easy to assemble alone, using components available on the internet.”
For a group that has relied on foreign sponsors for arms, the drones provide a cheap, homegrown alternative. “There may be some parts that are harder to source, which they might need to smuggle in and which may be bottlenecks for production,” said Shaan Shaikh, a defense analyst at Rand. “But because so many pieces are commercially available, they can mostly source what they need from regular suppliers. And then they’ll put the pieces together at assembly locations.”
“This is clearly distinct from supplying missiles because it’s harder to get a rocket booster or the most effective fuels,” Shaikh said. “There will be duds — malfunctioning drones — along the way, because Hezbollah and other militant operators probably don’t have a refined drone assembly process. It may be an ad hoc process. But it’s still doable, and these drones are still lethal.”
Hezbollah, Fenig said, is “demonstrating advanced capabilities that, in my estimation, caught the IDF by surprise.”
“When equipped with a warhead,” he said, the weapons “can deliver a dramatic impact from a significant distance.”
Current countermeasures, Kalisky said, include micro-laser-guided missiles, mechanical traps such as nets or shields, or microwave beams, which “can easily ‘cook’ the drone’s camera and electronics. Another known defense is to disperse paint in the air to block the camera’s line of sight.
Fenig stressed there’s no single answer. “The problem isn’t a specific transmission technology,” he said. “Tomorrow, a drone might fly using cellular transmission or Starlink, like we have seen already in Ukraine, or use a proprietary, encrypted communication link. Then everyone will start talking about that and stop talking about fiber optics.
“This is a known threat that has simply gone unanswered.”
A second Israeli military official said the Israel Defense Forces were “monitoring the drone threat and developing operational methods to address it.” The official also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operations.
“Troops on the ground are continuously working to improve and adapt their systems in order to deal with the evolving threat,” the official said. “With the guidance of the Intelligence Directorate, troops have gained a clearer understanding of the enemy’s capabilities and vulnerabilities, strengthening their operational response.”
Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, described Israel’s vulnerability as more strategic than tactical.
“The troops are sitting like sitting ducks inside Lebanon, while the IDF prevents the Lebanese residents of the area from returning to their homes,” she said. Trump administration brokers “must understand that any agreement must include an IDF withdrawal back to Israel’s borders, alongside arrangements that ensure security for the residents of the Gaza envelope and northern Israel.”
Haidamous and El Chamaa reported from Beirut.
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