Israel: Hezbollah's New Drone Technology Poses a Significant Threat

According to a report by Reference News Network on May 8, the website of the "Today Israel" reported on May 3 that in the past week, almost everyone in Israel has been talking about Hezbollah's "fiber optic drone." This type of drone has become a real, urgent, and deadly threat in southern Lebanon. But the worse news is that there is an even greater threat. It makes intercepting drones during the launch phase extremely difficult, if not impossible, endangering every person and facility within Israel.

This is "cellular network-based drone control."

Using existing technology, attackers can remotely control drones of various sizes from any distance, in a stable, reliable, and relatively easy manner.

This is a technological leap. Two or three years ago, drone operators had only two options: either use radio frequencies to control them within a few kilometers or launch them like rockets and leave them unattended.

But with the development of cellular network control technology, we have entered a completely different world.

An Israeli former senior security official in the drone field explained: "Take the 'Witness'-136 drone as an example; you just need to install a modem with a local SIM card—just like the one in a mobile phone—to use the cellular network of the host country, and you can also achieve international data roaming. Just like you can make international calls using video chat software, the operator can receive high-quality images captured by the drone in real-time, without the delays of satellite communication."

Controlling a drone to infiltrate from abroad is just one aspect of this threat. There is an even more dangerous scenario that is harder to detect: operators can establish a connection with drones that have already been lurking within another country.

This former security official said: "An operator could be in Tehran, and as long as they have accomplices in places like Tel Aviv who can obtain drones through 3D printing or online shopping, and install communication modules on them, the operator in Tehran can remotely control it to carry out reconnaissance missions."

The official warned: "Imagine if the Iranians sent a drone to hover over the Israeli Defense Forces headquarters for half an hour, recording the movements of everyone inside the building... All of this can be achieved with just a 3D printer and a cellular modem. Accomplices can also attach explosives to the drone, and even a small amount of explosives would suffice, because the operator in Tehran can precisely control the drone to strike a specific window."

If you think this is far-fetched, consider the "Spider Web" operation that Ukraine conducted in June last year against the Russian heartland: Ukraine transported 117 drones to near a Russian air force base by truck, which were remotely controlled by operators hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away via cellular networks, attacking four strategic bomber bases.

"Because drones can connect with operators through cellular networks, they have transformed from tactical tools into strategic threats," the aforementioned official pointed out. "This technology constitutes a paradigm shift. To pose a threat within Israel today, there is no need to fly in from abroad and cross the border, which is where all the defense systems are focused. Now, potential threats may already be hidden within the country, and you may not even be able to identify the remote operator; they are just one of the 15 million ordinary subscribers on the Israeli cellular network. If it were the United States with hundreds of millions of subscribers, wouldn't it be like finding a needle in a haystack?"

In fact, the United States has already been on guard against this threat during Operation "Epic Fury."

The FBI warned California police in early March that explosive drones might be launched from commercial ships near the coast.

As for whether Iran has this capability, former Israeli military intelligence officer Or Horowitz confidently stated: "Iran possesses this technology because it has upgraded versions of the 'Witness' drone. It cannot be ruled out that Iran used this technology when attacking U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in Saudi Arabia, as that strike was highly precise and targeted. We now also suspect that Hezbollah has mastered this technology."

Compared to fiber optic drones, the threat posed by cellular network-based drones is more difficult to handle.

Horowitz said: "Fiber optics can extend several kilometers or over a dozen kilometers. Limited by terrain and fiber optic length, fiber optic drones cannot reach the Israeli Defense Forces headquarters from southern Lebanon; whereas network drones are not subject to such limitations, and they have already posed a strategic risk, capable of striking directly at Israel's core 'soft spots' without appearing at the border."

Horowitz and other anonymous Israeli senior officials believe that people have not fully recognized the severity of this threat.

"If Israel once prided itself on being able to penetrate missiles into specific apartment windows, this new technology has given non-state actors the same level of capability. This is the proliferation of 'precision strike capability.'" (Translated by Zhu Li)