After scoring a crushing victory over Hezbollah in 2024, Israel is finding its ongoing campaign in Lebanon much more difficult, in large part due to its adoption of the war in Ukraine’s deadliest innovation.
After suffering embarrassing losses against Israel in 2024, Hezbollah sought to rearm and regroup quickly as it awaited the inevitable next war with Israel. As part of this rearmament, it invested heavily in first-person-view drones, a quadrocopter with an explosive attached that can be guided directly into a target. The drones have been used by Hezbollah in a limited capacity beginning in September 2024, but the current war has seen their use expanded significantly.
Hezbollah FPV drones killed Israeli Sgt. Idan Fooks and a northern Israel resident, Amer Hujeirat, over the past week, wounding many more. A single FPV drone strike on Thursday wounded 12 Israeli soldiers when it hit an armored cargo vehicle, engulfing it in flames.
While the limited number of FPV drone strikes in the 2024 war mainly targeted light vehicles and equipment, the new strikes have targeted tanks, armored vehicles, and soldiers.
These strikes have come despite a ceasefire reached by the governments of Israel and Lebanon, which was expanded last week. Prominent Hezbollah Parliamentarian Ali Fayyad said last week that the party “firmly rejects” the ceasefire.
The new fiber-optic threat
Lt. Col. Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center and a 15-year Israeli Intelligence Corps veteran, told the Washington Examiner that the new FPV drones are “truly a problem,” especially the fiber-optic variant that has been used more over the past few weeks.
Militaries have spent years building up their defenses against drone warfare, with one of the most effective methods being the use of electronic jamming to sever the radio connection between the operator and the drone. Fiber-optic drones solve this problem with a simple solution: The drone is connected to the operator with a thin wire that can stretch for miles in some cases.
“As everything in wars and everything in this field, defense is not 100%, and the more stupid the technology is, the more difficult it is to intercept it,” Zehavi said. “We are seeing this with those drones from Lebanon.”
The increased use of FPV drones has triggered a panic among some Israeli commanders, who warn that point defense is no longer adequate to counter the threat. Senior Israeli military officers told Ynet News that the new threat necessitated an expansion of the war, with a concentration of strikes north of the Litani River to hit drone supply chain centers in the north.
“The current situation plays into Hezbollah’s hands — the rules must be changed,” the officials said.
The officials said new strikes must target infrastructure, equipment depots, operational units, and supply chains tied to Hezbollah’s new drone network. In doing this, the Israeli military could increase the costs of using nominally inexpensive FPV drones, forcing the group to ration the weapon.
Zehavi agreed with this approach, with some caveats.
“I agree with them, except I don’t think our attacks are because of those FPV drones,” she said, arguing that the overall Israeli military strategy should be the incessant weakening of Hezbollah across all fronts.
Attacks on the drone supply chain should only take place amid a wider strategic air campaign, including attacks against Hezbollah’s smuggling routes, decision-making centers, and manufacturing hubs.
“Don’t confuse strategic with tactical,” Zehavi said.
Expanding the war, fully tossing aside the ceasefire, could carry political risks, however. President Donald Trump has pushed against Jerusalem over its conduct in Lebanon, lobbying for the maintenance of the ceasefire to focus on reaching a deal with Iran. He told Axios on Wednesday that he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to carry out only surgical strikes in Lebanon.
‘A threat without a clear solution’
Israel’s response to the new fiber-optic FPV drone threat reflects initial efforts from Russia and Ukraine to counter each other’s drones, with social media footage showing some Israeli military vehicles covered in netting, designed to catch the light drones before they can detonate.
A senior Israeli military official who recently returned from Lebanon told the War Zone that with the new drones, Israel faces “a threat without a clear solution.”
“What’s been shown in the video seems more like an experimental concept rather than something that is already operational in the field,” he said.
“In practice, forces are using various improvised solutions — fishing nets, camouflage nets, even soccer nets, along with drills involving small-arms fire at drones,” the official added. “However, I personally haven’t seen the specific net system mentioned being used on the ground yet.”
While agreeing that the FPV drones were a new challenge, Zehavi cautioned against overstating their impact.
“I don’t think it’s a game-changer,” she argued. “I think it’s another challenge on the battlefield that we have to face and we have to deal with, and we will become better and better with experience, like everything else.”
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Zehavi doubted the proliferation of FPV drones would have a truly decisive impact on the war overall, comparing it to previous technological improvements Hezbollah has adopted.
“It’s this kind of technology, and in the future, it’s a different one,” Zehavi said. “And the next day it’s Cornet missiles, and afterwards, it’s rockets. And it doesn’t matter. It is all around the same issue that you have another entity, a state within a state situation in Lebanon, that the Lebanese Government has enabled this to happen, and we are the only ones who are fighting this. That’s it, that’s the bottom line.”