A quadcopter from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel earlier this
month, and the IDF released a short message, saying a unit had arrived to take
it away for checks. The seemingly mundane incident is, in fact, indicative
of a growing trend: the use of drones by Israel's enemies.
Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic State and
other radical non-state actors have their own drone programs, each at different
stages, and posing different level of threat. Israel is a world pioneer in
the use of military drones, being the first to utilize them to coordinate
strikes on the battlefield in the 1980s.
Today, Israel's drone technology is a
global leader, but Israel's enemies have begun getting in on the act, and the
number of remotely controlled aircraft in their possession is growing. Tal
Inbar, head of the Space and UAV Research Center at the Fisher Institute for
Air and Space Strategic Studies in the Israeli city of Herzliya, told JNS.org
about two types of developing threats.
The first is the enemy use of commercial drones, such as those produced by the
DJI company, which Inbar said are "very good vehicles. They are accurate,
and you can plan their flight paths. Controlling them is comfortable, and they
can carry payloads." In Syria, Islamic State has used commercial drones to
drop a variety of explosives on targets, Inbar said. But even the mere presence
of these drones could be used as a weapon.
"If they enter a protected area, they could disrupt something like
air traffic. If you're running Ben Gurion International Airport, and suddenly
you see two to three quadcopters landing, you wouldn't be giving anyone
permission to take off or land," said Inbar. The second category of
threat is the larger fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are
present in the arsenals of Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas has its own fixed wing
drone production program in Gaza, Inbar said, describing those aircraft as
"relatively simple."
Hamas is experimenting with placing weapons under the wings of these
UAVs, he added. Hezbollah, by contrast, imports industrially produced,
sophisticated Iranian-made military drones, which cost considerable money to
develop. Hezbollah's drones include guided rockets that can be launched from
the UAV at targets on the ground a few miles away.
"They could, in principle, fly over Lebanon, and fire at targets in
Israel," Inbar said. "Hamas is working on achieving that
capability too. The Hamas drones have rockets, but they're not yet guided. You
don't have to be a super engineer to improve these capabilities," he
added.
Haim Haviv, head of the Integrated Electronic Warfare Systems for
Mountains Terrain program at the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems, said,
"We can say that capabilities once reserved for big organizations and
militaries are now in the hands of smaller groups like Hamas, ISIS (Islamic
State) and others." These elements are using "high-performance
commercial drones to gather intelligence and launch strikes at people and
vehicles" on the ground, he told JNS.org.
A drone purchased on eBay arrives ready to begin gathering intelligence,
he said, delivering quality visual images from afar. Dropping bombs is more
complex, but can be done with some relatively simple adaptations, Haviv said. Elbit
sells a defensive counter-measure to the threat of commercial drones in the
service of terrorists. It is called ReDrone, and it provides "full
peripheral defense," automatically protecting designated areas.
ReDrone detects the presence of drones using its variety of sensors, and
disrupts their communications and navigational systems, blocking radio signals
and satellite transmissions that the drone needs to know where to fly.
"The ReDrone system is already being sold. We are seeing a lot of
interest in the solution we offer, and are in the midst of carrying out checks
with a variety of clients in Israel and around the world, while continuing to
develop these capabilities," Haviv said. Looking ahead, Haviv believes
commercial drones will become involved in a growing number of security
incidents.
As the threat grows, interest grows accordingly from militaries and
civilian security providers, like police forces and airports. All of them are
searching for ways to defend themselves. "The future battlefield is
becoming increasingly complex," Haviv said, noting that it will be filled
with autonomous drones, some of which have the ability to fly like a flock of
birds in formation.
To defend an area as large as a state, fighter jets and surface-to-air
missiles are the tools to get the job done, said the UAV Research Center's
Inbar. Israel has used both to shoot down enemy drones that intruded its
air space from Gaza and Lebanon in recent years. In a minority of cases, the
Israeli Air Force missed its target. In the future, laser guns might also play
a part in shooting drones out of the sky, he said.
Inbar issued a cautionary note about what could happen during a
full-scale conflict, when Israel's skies would be crowded with incoming rockets
and Israeli air defence interceptors. "During such times, the freedom
to manouvre, and the ability to send an F-16 into the sky to shoot down a
drone, won't always be there," he said.
The future will see terrorist entities develop heavier drones armed with
higher-quality weapons, and on Israel's side, improved counter-measures, Inbar
added.One day, he said, the sight of drones defending the skies against other
drones may not be science fiction.
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