Small, difficult to detect and able to pack a powerful punch, attack drones have become a formidable weapon in modern warfare. But when launched from deep inside enemy territory — as in Iran and in Russia this month — their impact is all the more devastating.
The surprise factor of having to fend off drones attacking from within combines a classic military strategy with modern technology. Spy craft and covert operations have long been a part of combat, but using them to build or deploy deadly drones behind enemy lines is a new tactic in the ever-evolving art of war, officials and weapons experts said.
That was the case two weeks ago, when more than 40 Russian war planes were hit by a swarm of 117 drones that Ukraine had secretly planted near military bases in Russia months earlier. Some were thousands of miles from Ukraine.
It was also the case in Iran, which lost missiles, interceptors and air defense systems that were destroyed on Friday by drones and other weapons that Israeli intelligence operatives had smuggled in earlier.
Many of the details about the secretive operations, and how they were carried out, remain murky to protect methods of intelligence collection and sources of covert information.
But Israel’s approach gave it an edge in its wide-ranging attack against Iran “because it’s coming from left flank,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general and defense strategist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“This means that Iran not only has to look west, to see what’s coming, but it also needs to look inside,” Mr. Orion said.
The Israeli clandestine mission was the product of years of work, Israeli officials have said. That included commando operations inside Tehran, which was hit hard on Friday, including explosions that struck residential buildings.
Experts believed that at least some of the drones used in the overall attack were quadcopters, with four propellers, including some that were relatively small but able to carry bombs or other weapons.
“One of the things that created was, of course, surprise,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a national address on Friday night. “I told President Trump when we spoke, ‘Surprise is the essence of success.’”
Mr. Netanyahu compared the covert attack to another by Israel, last September in Lebanon, where pagers and walkie-talkies filled with explosives targeted Hezbollah. That operation was also cited by intelligence experts in early June, after Ukraine’s surprise strike in Russia, as an example of how technology is rapidly changing the way wars are fought.
But at the heart of all three military missions — in Lebanon, Russia and now Iran — is the painstaking and often fruitless effort of intelligence gathering. Such operations can take years and are fraught with danger.
“At the end of the day, the drones are just instruments, and the way they can be used comes down to your sophistication and your creativity,” said Farzan Sabet, an analyst of Iran and weapons systems at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland. “So it’s a natural evolution — this is just a taste of what’s to come.”
Drones may become an especially attractive weapon in covert operations, Mr. Sabet said, if they can be smuggled into enemy territory in parts and over time, making them even more difficult to detect.
As drone warfare evolves, so will ways to counter it. That could include both low-tech solutions, like shielding military equipment and other targets with hardened covers, or more advanced systems that shoot down drones, either with a weapon or by jamming them.
Mr. Sabet said Iran has been developing a multilayered air defense system with a “360-degree perspective of threats coming in” that, if operational, should have been able to detect incoming attacks both from high in the atmosphere, like a ballistic missile, or from a drone launched from a few kilometers away. Why that did not happen on Friday is not clear.
But the similarities between the drone-smuggling operations by Israel and Ukraine suggest that such tactics will be copied in other conflicts — at least until even newer, stealthier or more powerful war-fighting strategies are developed.
“The technology is impressive in both the operations by Ukraine, and in the case of Israel; it’s pushing the boundaries of the novel uses of this technology,” Mr. Sabet said. “But for me, the human intelligence side of it, that’s more incredible.”
Ronen Bergman contributed reporting.
Lara Jakes, based in Rome, reports on diplomatic and military efforts by the West to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. She has been a journalist for nearly 30 years.
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