A building in which Israeli soldiers are positioned in Bayyada, south Lebanon. Footage filmed by a Hezbollah "explosive drone" on May 10 in south Lebanon. (Credit: Footage broadcast by the media wing of Hezbollah)
BEIRUT — Israel is setting up a factory to produce a fleet of fiber-optic suicide drones to counter, among others, those used by Hezbollah that have claimed Israeli lives in recent weeks, Israeli army radio reported.
These drones will be used "on all fronts of the war," according to information published by the radio station, and the factory to be built will "industrialize and expand" the army's suicide drone arsenal, in a "completely Israeli" production.
Ultra-Orthodox soldiers will be mobilized in this factory and the first recruitment will take place in June. "Large quantities" of these devices could be manufactured within two months, according to army estimates, at a rate of "several thousand per month" at first, then "tens of thousands monthly."
"Hezbollah's explosive drones pose a strategic challenge for [Israeli] forces in southern Lebanon and along the northern border. Since the start of the cease-fire, these drones have claimed the lives of many fighters and civilians in the region," military radio added.
Fiber-optic "FPV" suicide drones have been widely used by Hezbollah since the start of the theoretical cease-fire to attack Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon, modeled after Iranian-made drones used by the Russian army in the war in Ukraine. The Israeli general staff has since been searching for ways to defend against these small, inexpensive, improvised devices, which manage to circumvent the Israeli army's sophisticated electronic jamming and radar systems, worth several million dollars.
Reports from Haaretz recently indicated the deployment of drones that project nets onto the devices used by Hezbollah.
