Hezbollah rebuilding drone force for next war – report

Iran is helping its chief proxy in its efforts to vastly expand its supply of UAVs, the Alma Research and Education Center says.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Hezbollah is undeterred from its long-range goal of destroying Israel and is currently focusing on replenishing and improving its drone force with Iran’s constant assistance, a security research center told Maariv in an interview Thursday.

“The strengthening of Hezbollah’s drone force in general, and the suicide bombers within it in particular, is one of the main lessons the Iranians and Hezbollah learned from the last war” with Israel, said Tal Beeri, head of the Alma Research and Education Center’s research department focusing on the northern border.

“The transformation of the drone force from a potential strategic threat to an actual strategic threat,” he said, “stems from the quantity of drones, their quality and the way they are operated, and the lesson the Iranians learned to operate them on very large scales simultaneously, and not as they were used” when Hezbollah supported Hamas’ war with Israel by launching single UAVs or small groups of them at a time at the Jewish state, almost none of which did any significant damage.

Hezbollah instead fired over 10,000 unguided rockets at Israel starting the day after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion, and although they did harm and dozens were killed and injured, it never managed to launch so many at a time that Israel’s defenses were overwhelmed.

Hezbollah’s tactics may change in the future, he warned.

“One of the main lessons learned by the Iranians” from studying how Russia is conducting its war in Ukraine, he explained, “is the Russian use of suicide drones — simultaneously launching dozens and hundreds of drones of different types towards a defined urban area with targets, causing great damage to infrastructure, property, and lives.”

Beeri noted that they are now actively aiding Hezbollah to rebuild its own airborne force, as the IDF “severely damaged” it along with eliminating Hezbollah’s elite units and a large part of the terrorists’ infrastructure last fall, which forced the group within six weeks to sue for a ceasefire.

The Islamic Republic “made a strategic decision to rehabilitate Hezbollah … and to rehabilitate two main components: smuggling weapons and independent production of weapons on Lebanese soil,” he said.

To counter the former threat, Israel has bombed smuggling routes and put pressure on Syria to better seal its border with Lebanon from illicit arms trains.

As to the latter, Israel has not been blind to the manufacturing efforts, and has struck Hezbollah weapons sites repeatedly in the ensuing months.

Beeri especially pointed out last week’s airstrikes, which focused specifically on the terrorists’ air division.

The manufacturing, assembly and storage facilities that were destroyed were all hidden “under and near civilian residential buildings” in a Beirut neighborhood and a village called Ain Qana in southern Lebanon, he said, and contained “hundreds” of drones.

Beeri estimated that Hezbollah has other production and assembly sites that Israel has not found yet, “and more will probably be established in the future,” as neither Iran nor Hezbollah will stop trying to build up a stockpile of “thousands” of drones to turn them into a strategic threat against Israel.

In a report last month on the situation in Lebanon, the Alma Center said that the terror organization “is driven by honor, pride, and a deep belief in an armed struggle against Israel” and that “despite the severe damage it has sustained, Hezbollah is far from disappearing.”

“The critical question,” it said, “is … whether Israel has the patience and persistence to continue weakening Hezbollah until it loses relevance, and whether the state of Lebanon has the ability and will to confront Hezbollah.”