Why Israel’s high-tech iron dome is powerless in opposition to Hezbollah’s new fiber-optic drones
4 min learnApr 30, 2026 09:40 PM IST
Small drones, managed by fiber optic cables the width of a dental floss, are being deployed by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in its conflict in opposition to northern Iran. This weapon has beforehand been broadly utilized by Ukraine in its conflict in opposition to Russiathe Related Press reported.
The fibre optic cables used within the drones are skinny and nearly invisible, making them proof against digital jamming. Whereas they’re prone to tangling as a result of wind or different drones, drone professional Robert Tollast of the Royal United Companies Institute informed AP that “if you understand what you’re doing, it’s completely lethal.”
In keeping with Tollast, the drones fly low and are quick and small, making detection and interception extraordinarily troublesome. Specialists additionally notice that since they’re small and quick, they’re onerous to trace and detect. Israel must discover a method to intercept them, which is extraordinarily troublesome, or snip the practically invisible cables.
Former Israeli air defence commander Ran Kochav admitted Israel is at the moment failing to counter them: “They fly very low and really quick, and they’re very small, it’s very troublesome to detect them, and even after they’re detected, they’re actually onerous to trace.” He additionally acknowledged that Israel centered too closely on missile and rocket defenceneglecting drone threats — a lesson that ought to have been drawn from the Ukraine conflict.
Ukrainian know-how
Moscow and Kyiv have been in a relentless battle of know-how within the four-year conflict. Fiber-optic drones had been developed within the Ukraine battle to bypass the digital jamming of Russian Shahed drones.
Tollast stated that Russia and Ukraine have been utilizing many several types of drones “at an exceptional scale.”
The dimensions is such that total fields in Ukraine have been coated within the cables. Cables have been recorded extending as much as 50 km. Their use is so widespread in Ukraine that front-line cities are draped in shiny, fishing-line-like cables resembling big spiderwebs.
Assaults and casualties
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Hezbollah has been airing movies of assaults with the brand new drones in opposition to Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on social media platforms and Al-Manar TV. Notable factors within the video collection have been an assault that killed one Israeli soldier and wounded six, and one other, on Tuesday, when an assault killed an Israeli civilian.
Within the assault the place the Israeli soldier was killed, Hezbollah issued a video taken by a drone until it exploded. In the identical location, a second drone was fired as a army helicopter landed to evacuate the injured. The drone, nevertheless, narrowly missed the mark.
Israel has a fleet of drones that perform assaults and guarantee surveillance to focus on Hezbollah militants. Hezbollah introduced the usage of the drones on March 2 throughout a spherical of combating.
A detailed name in Kiryat Shmona
Zevik Glidai, a 78-year-old math instructor and ambulance volunteer dwelling 1.5 miles from the Lebanese border, discovered one such drone crashed in his yard on April 13, surrounded by coils of white fiber-optic thread, AP reported. Almost 2 kg of explosives didn’t detonate. “We’re very frightened about these drones as a result of there’s no method to shoot it down, as a result of we are able to’t detect it,” he stated, including that bomb squad responders informed him, “You could have a number of luck.”
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“They picked up the entire items that they may choose up, and so they left me a number of optical fibers as a memento,” he added.
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