Friday's drone incident, in which a Hezbollah drone penetrated Israeli airspace and managed to return to Lebanon unscathed, is troubling from Israel's perspective.
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The embarrassing incident occurred just a day after the IDF downed two unmanned aircraft belonging to Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. Those drones were intercepted by "soft" measures, or by electronic means, which apparently failed to bring down Friday's drone.
The assessment among Israeli defense officials is that Hezbollah has many dozens of drones in its arsenal, if not more, of varying sizes and capacities, designed to gather intelligence or simply provoke an Israeli reaction. It must also be noted that such drones can be armed with explosives and used as precision weapons.
They are also easy to operate, cheap to procure, and are difficult to detect by radar.
Indeed, the "Hassan" drone Hezbollah said it deployed into Israeli airspace on Friday led Israel to scramble fighter jets and activate air raid sirens in the country's north, yet it wasn't shot down. It reportedly reached 70 kilometers (43 miles) inside Israeli territory, and it was not clear if it had recorded any images while in Israeli airspace.
"The Islamic resistance launched the Hassan drone into occupied Palestinian territory and it surveyed the area for 40 minutes," Hezbollah said in a statement.
Lebanese media outlets later reported that Israeli warplanes flew over Beirut at low altitude following the incident. The weak Israeli response indicates the balance of deterrence between Israel and Hezbollah at this point in time. It's reasonable to assume that had a drone infiltrated Israel from Gaza or even Syria, the decision would have been made to attack military targets in response.
The main concern in Israel is that Friday's incident indicates the emergence of yet another variable in the Israel-Hezbollah deterrence equation, in which Israel responds with a show of force, such as buzzing Beirut, but with little deterrent substance.
In light of all these factors, Israel in recent months has accelerated its preparations for contending with the drone threat. As of this writing, the Israeli answer to this threat comprises three main elements, which were all used on Friday as well: interception via IAF aircraft, interception via the Iron Dome missile defense system, or interception via electronic warfare. The fact that all these elements failed to down the drown is extremely concerning, not in the least because of the threat of Iranian drones stationed in Iraq and Yemen that are capable of flying hundreds and even thousands of miles.
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