For only 500 dollars: Hezbollah pulls out a new weapon that is immune to interceptions

In the videos, the explosive drones are seen maneuvering in the air at high speed and crashing into armored vehicles or even soldiers. Unlike observation and intelligence drones, flying these attack drones requires a high degree of skill and requires the pilot to wear a helmet or special glasses that project to him what is happening from the drone’s camera. The pilot at the same time hides in a shelter or in a remote and protected structure away from the Israeli forces. Because of this, these drones are called: “FPV drones”. That is, drones that can be controlled with a joystick similar to that of game consoles and reality glasses.

The threat that is printed on the printer

In recent days, the weapon has undergone a new upgrade taken from the battlefields in Ukraine: the explosive drone is connected by an optical fiber directly to the cell from which it is activated – a means that provides it with full protection against abortive attempts by disrupting the location (GPS) or radio signals. These are thin fibers with an average length of 10 km and a weight of 1.5 kg, not an impossible weight for a tiny drone, but enough to allow it to crash into an Israeli armored vehicle at a distance of a few kilometers. On the battlefield in Ukraine, optical fibers reaching even up to 60 km were observed.

This is not the first time that Hezbollah has launched deadly flying aircraft into Israel: in the “Iron Swords” war, unmanned aerial vehicles were also sent to attack the Prime Minister’s house, and in October 2024, an unmanned aerial vehicle hit the roof of the dining room at the Golani brigade training base, resulting in the death of four soldiers. The last one was “Misrad-1”, based on the Iranian Abbil UAV, with a wingspan of up to seven meters.

Hezbollah also has the lighter “Shah 101” UAVs and the more deadly “Shah 136” UAVs, which are launched directly from Iran. But in the last campaign, the frequency of their arrival on the battlefield is low, partly because their price is high and is estimated at tens of thousands of dollars. In contrast, the FPV drones have become a real nuisance for IDF soldiers in the last two weeks of combat.

In contrast to the expensive and large UAVs, the FPV drones are produced cheaply by the terrorists from any home, in assembly plans transferred to them, according to the assessment of the American research institute FDD, from the Russian army.

These are tiny drones that cost hundreds of dollars per unit, usually between $400 and $500. They include four blade motors mounted on parts that can be printed on a 3D printer or purchased without export restrictions from sites like Ali Express or Amazon.

On the drones, Hezbollah installs a small explosive charge that weighs an average of 2.5 kg of explosive material or anti-tank weapons. The availability of the drones has made them the central tie-breaking weapon in Ukraine with a production rate of about 7,000 drones per day in the Ukrainian army alone, or about 200,000 units per month.

A flying object in Lebanon

According to the American research institute FDD, the FPV drones are responsible for 60%-80% of all injuries and fatal hits on the battlefield in Ukraine due to their accuracy, maneuverability and ability to transmit charges directly to the target. All this in small explosive charges.

“Battlefield experience has proven that FPV drones are more threatening than vehicles or soldiers,” said a study released by the American Institute last week. “Ukraine recently shot down a Russian attack helicopter using a drone. Hezbollah may try to use similar tactics against Israeli forces, like helicopters that the IDF uses to intercept the organization’s drones.”

However, the damage caused to the IDF chariot tanks or the heavy duty APCs is estimated by the industry to be quite limited. Hezbollah’s videos end at the point of impact, and unlike what happened in Ukraine, they are not about launching a photo drone to film the effect of the impact.

Hagai Balshai, CEO of the Robotican drone company, estimates that “the Israeli armored personnel carriers are relatively tough and are not easily damaged by the explosive drones, perhaps in contrast to the situation of the armored personnel carriers in Ukraine.” However, it can be estimated that the communication systems and the external equipment were damaged, in addition to the morale damage as a result of the number of flying objects that appear over the heads of the soldiers in southern Lebanon.

An FPV type drone surpasses common commercial drones such as DJI or the Chinese Otel, mainly thanks to its low price, ease of assembly and launch, a variety of off-the-shelf components with a stable supply chain, and the possibility of a large number and variety of analog and digital communication protocols. Within this FPV category, a fiber-optic drone outperforms a non-fiber drone in its ability to provide good quality transmission to the operator and immunity from signal interference.

However, it is not without its drawbacks: the fact that the drone is tethered to the ground by a cable limits its maneuverability and increases the chance of detection. In Ukraine, the fiber-connected drones make up only 15% of all launched drones, most of them in the dead area in the campaign areas. Those areas, like the city of Lyman for example, are completely covered by a network of thin fiber optic wires.

A game of cat and mouse

About 85% of the drones on the Ukrainian battlefield are of the wireless type. And unlike off-the-shelf drones sold by Chinese manufacturers such as DJI or Otel, it is more difficult to disrupt the communication between them and the operator since it is not built on digital telemetry and accepted communication protocols.

“The standard intelligence systems have difficulty dealing with the radio systems of the wireless explosive drones – after all, it is not possible to block all the radio frequencies in the environment, and it is impossible to guess the communication frequency and the communication protocol in which each and every drone operates,” says Dr. Yeftah Richter, founder of the R2 company that supplies drone and UAV detection systems to armies in Europe. “That’s why a game of cat and mouse is going on where attack drones are fighting each other.”

Brigadier General (ret.) Finney Jungman, president of TiaSG, explains that while the detection of explosive drones using radar or electro-optical sensors is already possible today by a variety of systems, their interception is a difficult task due to the difficulty of disrupting the communication in the fiber optic drones.

However, he explains that at least two companies in which TSG invests are already developing solutions that may alleviate the problem: Robotichan is developing an attack drone with a warhead that will be able to intercept several drones at the same time in the future, while Para-Zero is developing a drone that will know how to throw a net in the air even from a distance of 30 meters and in this way bring the attacking drone to the ground.

“Today there is no real solution for the explosive drones based on optical fibers,” says Balshai. “There is no drone that knows how to fly and sabotage a fiber, and even trying to shoot from a machine gun or a rifle is a gamble, therefore – as in Ukraine – the best solution for ground forces is to defend themselves against them, preferably behind nets that the drones get entangled in. Until you get behind the nets, it is necessary to practice large walking distances between soldiers, evasion exercises and passing through defenders.”

However, it is not clear to what extent soldiers practice this and what is the extent of the distribution of nets to protect against drones among the ground forces. According to many reports, awareness of the danger of explosive drones in the army is still low, even though these drones are making a name for themselves among Russian and Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine.

“There are certain awareness and practices, but it is not enough in relation to the existing threat, and certainly not considering the fact that this threat will only increase,” Jungman says. “The ease of preparing and launching the FPV drones, after Hezbollah has already passed the hurdle of producing the drones and training the pilots, foreshadows that this weapon is expected to be common on the battlefield, as it has become common in use in Ukraine and Syria.”