How Hezbollah’s drone pierced Israel’s Iron Dome

A Hezbollah drone hoodwinked Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome air-defence system late on Sunday and killed four soldiers and injured 60 others. A worried Israel has launched a probe into how its air-defence system was penetrated rather easily. There are two reasons why it is likely that the Iron Dome, so effective against rockets, missed the drone fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah drone hit an Israeli army base near Binyamina, a town located around 64km north of Tel Aviv and near the Lebanese border, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). This was one of the deadliest attacks on an IDF base since the war against Hamas began on October 7 last year.
The drone that evaded the Iron Dome and dealt a blow is believed to be Mirsad-1, according to a report in The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel reported that two drones fired from the sea entered Israeli airspace on Sunday.
“Both were Mirsad drones, known in Iran as the Ababil-T. The model is Hezbollah’s main suicide drone, and their use was not unique or unprecedented,” the Israeli media outlet reported.
It was reported that it was one of the two Mirsad-1 drones that evaded the air-defence system on Sunday night.
The Mirsad-1 drone has a range of 120 km and a top speed of 370 km per hour, it quoted the Alma Center, an Israeli research institute. The drone can carry payload (explosives) of up to 40kg, and can fly as high as 3,000 metres, it added.
The Jerusalem Post said that Mirsad-1 was a drone that Hezbollah had deployed for over two decades, and it was based on Iranian designs.
Hezbollah is a Shia terrorist group that is supported and armed by Iran.
This isn’t the first time that Hezbollah drones have entered Israeli airspace undetected.
On April 11, a Hezbollah drone flew undetected for nine minutes over “Western Galilee cities and settlements before returning safely to southern Lebanon”, reported the Defence Industry Daily. It said it was Israeli locals who reported sighting the drone.
The Times of Israel reported that both the drones that entered the Israeli airspace were detected by IDF radars and one was shot down off the coast north of Haifa.
It was the other drone that went off the radar and hit the Israeli army base. But how did the drone fall off the radar of the Iron Dome system?
The Times of Israel reported that Israeli planes and helicopters pursued the other drone, but it fell off the radar system and the IDF lost track of it.
The famed Iron Dome system, which is part of Israel’s air defence system, is designed to neutralise rockets fired from short distances, either the Palestinian territories or Lebanon.
It has an all-weather fire-control radar system which detects and tracks all possible targets at a range of 4-70 km.
A battle management computer determines whether the incoming rocket will land in a populated area. It then fires missiles at the rockets and others hit the ground.
There could be two reasons why the Israeli radars, part of the Iron Dome, missed the drones.
In Sunday’s attack, “Hezbollah launched multiple drones under the cover of a rocket barrage, a tactic aimed at overwhelming Israeli defense systems,” reported The Jerusalem Post.
The Iron Dome system isn’t impenetrable. It can be overwhelmed by a barrage of missile fire.
The other reason why it fell off the radar was because it flew low.
“While Israel’s Iron Dome is highly effective against rockets, it has faced challenges in detecting and intercepting small, low-flying drones like the Mirsad-1,” said The Jerusalem Post.
How the radars lost the drone and didn’t set off alarms in the Binyamina attack are being investigated by the IDF.
Israeli media outlets quoted the Alma Research Center to report that the Mirsad-1 was a modified version of Iran’s Mohajer-2 drone.
Drones are one of the capabilities with which Iran has armed its proxies.
Hezbollah is said to have an arsenal of around 2,000 drones, according to Alma Research Center.
With rocket fire overwhelming the Iron Dome and drones quietly slipping in, Israel has a task at hand to plug the gap. The drone attack is a latest display that Israel’s war against Hezbollah might be lopsided, but it isn’t one-sided.