The continuous buzzing of Israeli drones is a grim yet common sound for Lebanese. But Hezbollah is also increasingly relying on drones to attack Israeli troops, particularly those engaged in the latest occupation of southern Lebanon.
While the group's formerly vast missile stockpile has been massively depleted in the last two years, it is still able to launch attacks on Israel and prevent its northern residents from returning to their homes.
Both sides have been trading fire despite the three-week extension to a ceasefire a week ago, after six weeks of large-scale fighting left more than 2,500 dead and 1.2 million displaced in Lebanon.
Retired Lebanese Army general Mounir Shehadeh said that while Hezbollah was certainly increasing its focus on drone attacks, it “is important to understand this [strategy] as an evolution within a combat system, not a complete transformation”.
Israeli drones have remained a constant threat in Lebanon over the past couple of years, conducting reconnaissance of suspected Hezbollah members and their positions. The noisy surveillance drones regularly hover over Beirut and even more often over southern Lebanon, frequently harassing residents.
Armed drones, meanwhile, enable Israel to carry out precision strikes on smaller targets, such as vehicles, without expending expensive ammunition.
Drones – armed and unarmed – are not new to Hezbollah, but they had become “an almost daily tool in combat, not just a secondary weapon”, said Mr Shehadeh, who was previously the Lebanese government's co-ordinator with UN peacekeepers in the south.
The Iran-backed group has regularly released drone attack footage through its media wing, with one recent video showing a drone crashing into a group of Israeli soldiers.
A Hezbollah official said the group had developed this strategy “with the goal of striking fear and heavy loss in enemy infantry, since the Israeli soldier considers himself protected to the maximum by all kinds of heavy artillery, air force and the tanks it uses”.
The militia is also believed to use fibre-optic drones, which can evade traditional electronic countermeasures, making them more efficient.
Precision fire
In the past few days, Hezbollah has claimed drone attacks on Israeli positions in the Lebanese towns of Naqoura, Bint Jbeil, Qantara and Taybeh. On Sunday, a drone attack killed one Israeli soldier and wounded six.
Footage released by the Israeli army showed a Hezbollah drone strike on an injured soldier who was in the process of being evacuated.
“From a military and strategic standpoint, you can consider the first-person drones as the new martyrdom squads,” the Hezbollah official said.
The kamikaze drones are mounted with a camera at the front, allowing the operator to adjust trajectory and the point of impact. The term “martyrdom squads” refers to the suicide bombers used by Hezbollah from the 1980s.
In 1983, two suicide attacks on the US embassy and a US Marine Barracks killed more than 300 people. Those have been linked to Hezbollah and its former military commanders Imad Mughniyeh and Mustafa Badreddine, who were two of the US's most wanted men for decades.
In many ways, drones are a nuisance for the opposing army; they are difficult to detect, cheap to produce and can be launched in large numbers while also reducing the human cost. Mr Shehadeh described their use as “continuous attrition” rather than large-scale, infrequent stress.
“In other words, a transition from general heavy fire to precision fire and strategic attrition,” he said.
With Iran still reeling after its war with Israel and the US, and the Lebanese government trying to clamp down on Hezbollah's funding networks, cost-effective forms of attack are believed to be in demand, and the use of drones is now a feature of conflicts worldwide.
Iran's Shahed drones are used by Russia in Ukraine. Tehran launched thousands of them against civilian infrastructure in Gulf states during the war with the US and Israel.
If the month-long 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah saw the latter relying on anti-tank and unguided rockets, along with ground ambushes, it is now adding more drones and precise attacks to its arsenal.
The armed group is now embracing a more guerrilla style of fighting against Israeli troops, with intensified ground combat that may indicate a return to tactics more typical of its founding years in the 1980s.
