IDF confirms Hezbollah UAV damaged sensitive military site

The Sky Dew system detects and gives warning of aerial threats emanating from over the northern border.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The IDF confirmed Thursday Hezbollah’s claim to have damaged a sensitive military site in the north and is currently assessing the harm done.

Two explosive UAVs penetrated Israeli airspace Wednesday, heading for an air defense facility near the Golani Junction in the Lower Galilee.

One was shot down, the IDF said, while the other hit the location of the army’s new Sky Dew system, which operates a radar-filled reconnaissance blimp.

It was the first time the Iranian proxy managed to hit anything of consequence so deep into Israel.

According to JNS, the aircraft was impaired and IDF personnel are “attempting to determine whether the balloon’s sensors were also damaged.”

The giant blimp, officially called a High Availability Aerostat System (HAAS), is supposed to detect and give advanced warning of aerial threats from the north. It is considered one of the largest of its kind in the world.

Its electronic systems were developed together with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

This was Hezbollah’s third attempt to hit the base since the Israel-Hamas war broke out October 7. The first two times, their projectiles crashed short of their target.

In response, the Israeli jets destroyed a Hezbollah precision-rocket and drone production site deep in Lebanon’s Baalbek region, in what the IDF called “a significant attack.”

Lebanese media also reported several other airstrikes, all in the same area, calling it the largest Israeli attack there since the war began.

Hezbollah said its attack was retaliation for Israel’s assassination Tuesday night of one of its senior intelligence officers, Hussein Ibrahim Makki. The IDF had hit his car as it was traveling on a road near Tyre.

The terrorists also launched a barrage of some 60 rockets over the northern border Wednesday, with over three dozen more fired Thursday morning amidst three warnings of the entry of hostile aircraft.

There were no reports of injuries or damage caused by these most recent attacks, which joined a list of thousands of other aerial assaults that the Shiite terror organization has launched against Israel to support Hamas following the Gaza-based terrorist group’s massacre of 1,200 people in its surprise invasion on October 7.

Israel has killed some 300 Hezbollah terrorists in response, and an additional 60 members of other terror organizations, including senior officials of Hamas.