Israel: Drone strike shows how strong Iron Dome is

Drones may be slow, small and cheaper to produce, but they are not a deadly headache for Israel since the war has already been a year.

Four men were killed and dozens injured in a Hezbollah attack on an army base near Binyamina in northern Israel on Sunday.

We won’t let Pipo start asking how Israel’s expensive air defense system is equipped to stop them.

When Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited the damaged army base on Monday morning, he said he would make “significant efforts” to find solutions to prevent future drone attacks.

Some parts of the air defense systems work well. In northern Israel we almost constantly hear booms as the Iron Dome deflects rockets fired by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.

Israel says it hit 90% of targets.

But Iron Dome works with Hezbollah, they use local rockets and it is possible to calculate when the rockets will take off, so they go fit and block them.

Stopping drones is more complicated. And that’s no reason why we don’t use the problem for this war.

In July, drone strikes by the Houthis in Yemen shelled Tel Aviv. Previously, in October, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that a drone shooting down an Iraqi container killed two soybeans bound for the Golan Heights. Just last week, an Anoda drone hit a nursing home in central Israel.

Dr. Yehosua Kalisky, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the BBC: “Most, if not all, drones were manufactured in Iran and are being supplied to armed groups for Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.”

Drones have a low radar signature and are designed to fly at low altitudes, making early detection by radar difficult. Sometimes they even mistake them for birds.

Dr. Kalisky explains: “Furthermore, aircraft are difficult to operate because the UAVs (drones) fly slowly. They fly about 200 km/h, compared to the 900 km/h our jets fly.”

Israeli media reports indicate that two Haezbollah drones, similar to Ziyad 107, crossed Lebanese airspace over the Mediterranean on Sunday.

They shoot one, but they disappear so no warning sirens go off. E later hit the canteen of an army base.

But Sarit Zehani of the Alma Research Institute specializes in northern border security, and I can’t imagine the drones bring any luck.

She says, “That’s what I plan to do. I won’t try this for long.”

Zehani lives 9 km from the Lebanese border in the western Galilee and can watch the weather on Sunday from her balcony. She says rocket fire and alerts them all across the border area as they fire drones that “overwhelm” the air defense system and help the drones get through.

The Alma Research Institute has counted 559 times that drones have crossed the northern border since the war began a year ago, whether for surveillance or attack missions.

Apart from Sunday’s attack on Binyamina, there are said to have been 11 casualties in drone strikes.

Israeli air defense systems include the Iron Dome as well as other systems such as David’s Sling, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3, all designed to destroy ballistic missiles. And it will soon be joined by a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) battery from the United States, where nearly 100 US military personnel will be deployed.

They are currently developing more permanent solutions for recording drones.

Dr. Kalisky says, “They are working on high-power lasers and advanced technology to use microwave cannons to burn the electronics of the drones.”

She says this technology will be “available in the very near future.”