RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. A resurgent Hezbollah armed with deadly, new tactics is putting severe pressure on Israel and the United States as they attempt to achieve diplomatic gains on the Lebanese front of the Middle East crisis.
The greatest shift in recent months has emerged in the longtime Iranian Axis of Resistance ally's use of fiber-optic first-person view (FPV) drones, a weapon made infamous in the Russia-Ukraine war and appearing in the hands of Hezbollah for the first time in March, when the Lebanese group resumed hostilities in response to the U.S.-Israeli war launched against Iran on February 28.
A new report published by the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data (ACLED) monitor found that Hezbollah has used fiber-optic FPV drones in 21 percent of the attacks launched by the group over the past five months and in more than half of 33 events confirmed to have resulted in casualties among Israeli forces.
One-way attack drones, sometimes referred to as suicide drones, accounted for 24 percent of Hezbollah's attacks, a significant jump from just 6 percent from October and November 2024, when fighting intensified after Israel launched a cross-border invasion, followed by a ceasefire just over a year after Hezbollah intervened in support of the Palestinian Hamas movement's October 2023 attack.
Hezbollah operations of all kinds, including rocket launches, also rose from around 163 per month during that period to roughly 199 per month in the latest phase of the war.
"FPV drones have helped Hezbollah keep Israeli forces in southern Lebanon under military pressure, cause casualties, and strike from farther away by less visible operators," Nasser Khdour, ACLED's Middle East assistant research manager who authored the report, told Newsweek .
"At the same time, by showing that it can still reach Israeli forces despite its losses, Hezbollah has also tried to maintain psychological pressure on communities in northern Israel, exhaust Israeli air defenses, and distract its air forces."
Newsweek has reached out to representatives of Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment.
In May, an IDF official revealed that the Ground Forces’ Technological Brigade had begun "supplying troops in Lebanon with wire mesh nets designed to counter explosive drones." By that time, the IDF had already acquired around 158,000 square meters of netting, "equivalent to the area of approximately 20 soccer fields," according to the IDF official, with another 188,000 square meters on the way.
The development marks the latest instance of Hezbollah attempting to innovate an advantage against a technologically superior foe since their first clash in the 1980s.
During a month-long war in 2006, Hezbollah made use of Russia-designed Kornet anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMS) to penetrate heavily armored IDF Merkava tanks. By 2015, the group had designed a unique set-up of twin Kornet launchers known as "Tharallah" to counter Trophy active protective systems equipped to Israeli armored vehicles.
Since entering into a third major confrontation with Israel in October 2023, Hezbollah has utilized another ATGM to take on the IDF's formidable armored fleet, the Iranian Almas-1, reportedly reverse-engineered from Israeli Spike NLOS systems captured during the 2006 conflict. Unlike the laser-guided Kornet, the Almas-1 uses fiber optic cables allowing the user to "fire and forget" without keeping the target in the line of sight.
But even this system proved insufficient for repelling an Israeli support backed by drones.
"Hezbollah felt they can repel the Israelis once the Israelis they start and a ground invasion," defense analyst Hamze Attar told Newsweek . "This proved to be wrong, because the Israelis, with their surprise attack, they destroyed most of Hezbollah's arsenal, and with the increased buffer that they created with the Israeli unmanned air vehicles and the targeting, they forced Hezbollah to move north, way at the edge of the Litani River."
"Then, at this stage, Hezbollah's arsenal became obsolete," Attar said. "It does not work. It does not fit the battlefield. And any time they shoot, they put their operators in danger."
And with the continual elimination of operators threatening to become an "existential" threat to the group, Attar said Hezbollah drew lessons from the conflict in Ukraine to adapt fiber optic technology to new advantages in drone warfare, allowing the unmanned systems to fly without radio signature or vulnerability to electronic jamming.
As the Middle East Eye cited one source close to Hezbollah as saying in a report last week, "Hezbollah grew its military wing to give it a qualitative advantage in battle with Israel, but now it has changed tactics and relies on technology instead. The drones are the best example."
The drones are also exceedingly easy to operate, especially for those accustomed to on-screen combat. The Middle East Eye report unnamed sources linking Hezbollah's drone expertise to Lebanese youth gaming culture.
It wouldn't be the first intersection of Hezbollah and gaming. The group produced several self-made video game titles depicting battles with Israeli forces in Lebanon and Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Syria .
Now those skills appear to be put to use in what may be the group's most decisive war to date.
"The problem when you adapt to new weapons during wartime, during the battlefield, etc. is how long it will take you to train your new operators on a new weapon," Attar said. "But the good thing about the proliferation of video games is that everyone who's under 40 years old knows how to handle a joystick, and this does not require a lot of training."
"It requires some simulation, and then you're off to go. Then you train by doing. You learn while...
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