Hezbollah has deployed a new weapon against northern Israel: small drones guided by fibre‑optic cables as thin as dental floss that evade electronic detection. These fibre‑optic drones, widely used in the war in Ukraine, are small, hard to spot and can be lethal.
Unlike most drones that rely on radio links and are vulnerable to electronic jamming, these craft are tethered to an operator by a near‑invisible cable that transmits control signals directly, making electronic disruption ineffective. They remain imperfect — wind or other drones can tangle the cable — but when operated skillfully they can approach targets at low altitude and strike with precision, said Robert Tollast, a drone expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
Militaries facing them must either manage to intercept the drones despite their small size and short flight path or physically sever the nearly invisible tether. Hezbollah has mainly used the drones against Israeli soldiers operating in southern Lebanon and towns along the border.
A new weapon with a long trail
An Israeli military official told AP that fibre‑optic drones emerged as a relatively new threat in the latest fighting with Hezbollah. One reason for the shift is the effectiveness of Israeli air defences against larger rockets, missiles and radio‑linked drones. Israel believes many of the fibre‑optic systems are built locally from off‑the‑shelf drones, a modest explosive charge and readily available transparent wire.
The Israeli military views the tethered drones as a major danger to troops inside Lebanon and is working on technological responses, while also taking ground measures such as adding nets and cages to vehicles. The development is another chapter in the cat‑and‑mouse race between attackers adapting low‑cost, less sophisticated threats and Israel’s high‑tech defences.
Ran Kochav, a former head of Israel’s air defence command, said the country has struggled to counter fibre‑optic drones. “They fly very low and very fast, and they are very small; it’s very difficult to detect them, and even after they’re detected, they are really hard to track,” he said, arguing that Israel should have followed similar advances seen in Ukraine and anticipated their use by Iran‑aligned groups.
A technology race in the war in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine has seen intense innovation in drone use. Russia frequently employs Shahed long‑range attack drones — originally Iranian — but many of those can still be disrupted by jamming. Fibre‑optic drones were developed to bypass electronic countermeasures, though they generally have shorter operational autonomy than radio‑linked or autonomous drones. Tollast said some tethered drones have been recorded with cables extending as far as about 50 kilometres.
Russia and Ukraine employ many different drone types at scale, driving rapid tactical and technical adaptation.
In Ukraine, some fields are coated with drone cables
Fibre‑optic drones are so widely used in parts of Ukraine that photos and footage show frontline fields and structures crisscrossed with shiny, fishing‑line strands, resembling spiderwebs gleaming in sunlight.
Israel has detection technologies that can track subtle light changes, identify signals and pick up the sound of drone propellers, Kochav said, but such monitoring systems have not been deployed extensively along the northern border.
Hezbollah has posted videos of the new drone attacks
In recent weeks Hezbollah has released videos via social media and its Al‑Manar TV showing attacks with tethered drones, particularly against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. These strikes have drawn public attention: one attack killed an Israeli soldier and wounded six others, some seriously; another killed an Israeli civilian contractor in southern Lebanon.
In the incident that killed the soldier, Hezbollah released footage captured by the drone up to the moment it exploded among troops near a vehicle. A second drone targeted the same spot as a military helicopter landed to evacuate the wounded but narrowly missed. Hezbollah said it began using fibre‑optic guided drones for the first time in the round of fighting that began March 2, after years of employing other drone types.
Israel also operates its own drone fleet for surveillance and strikes, though not typically using tethered fibre‑optic links.
At a northern Israel home, a drone left coils of cable in the backyard
On April 13 a 78‑year‑old math teacher and volunteer ambulance driver, Zevik Glidai, found loops of translucent fibre‑optic cable around a drone that crashed in his Kiryat Shmona backyard, about 2 kilometres from the Lebanon border. He said he heard a high‑pitched shriek and a small crash; a neighbour reported a yard fire that they doused with a hose. The bomb squad later said it was a miracle that nearly 2 kilograms of explosives on the drone failed to detonate.
Glidai said there was no warning siren before the crash and that authorities collected debris, leaving him a few optical fibres as a keepsake. He and neighbours said they worry about the new drones because they are difficult to detect and defend against.
