Hezbollah’s Fiber-Optic Drones Bypass Israeli Radars, Netanyahu Orders Elimination in Southern Lebanon

Hezbollah’s use of low-cost, fiber-optic-guided drones is being described by Al-Jazeera Net as a “sudden nightmare” for Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, because the drones “bypass Israeli radars” and are “immunity to electronic jamming.”

“Lebanon: Hezbollah claimed about fifteen strikes carried out since Wednesday morning against Israel, including the headquarters of an aerospace industry company near Ben Gurion Airport, military infrastructure in northern Israel, and the outskirts of Tel Aviv, up to 120 kilometers south of the border with Lebanon, according to AFP”

African Manager

The report says the new weapon has disrupted Israeli surveillance systems and has become “the greatest challenge for the Israeli army in south Lebanon,” prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce that he had ordered the elimination of this threat.

African Manager

Al-Jazeera Net adds that on Monday evening Netanyahu admitted that Hezbollah’s missiles and drones pose “two main threats to Israel,” urging military leaders to resolve them.

It also says that Daily, “the army reports soldiers injured,” including serious cases, after drones crash and explode in areas where forces have penetrated in south Lebanon, and that “recently one soldier was killed due to an explosive drone detonation.”

In parallel, Al Jazeera frames the same tactical shift as Hezbollah introducing “first-person view (FPV) attack drones guided by a physical fibre optic cable” over the Lebanese town of Taybeh.

Both outlets tie the battlefield effect to the same core mechanism: the drones are tethered by fiber-optic cable rather than relying on radio frequencies or satellite signals that can be jammed.

Al-Jazeera Net and Al Jazeera both describe the fiber-optic drone design in operational terms, emphasizing that the system’s control and video transmission run through a physical cable rather than wireless links.

Al-Jazeera Net says that, according to the Israeli site Walla, “fiber-optic-guided drones, also known as wired drones, operate via an actual connection with a thin optical fiber thread” that “gradually unspools from a spool fixed to it during flight,” allowing commands and image transmission “directly through this thread, instead of radio waves subject to interference.”

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera similarly explains that the drones are “tethered directly to the operator’s control station by a fibre optic thread,” and that “the cable can extend between 10–30km [6.2 to 18.6 miles], allowing the drone to reach distant targets.”

Both reports stress that because there is no wireless signal to intercept, the drones are “immune to Israel’s sophisticated electronic warfare (EW) jamming systems,” and Al-Jazeera Net adds that the model “does not usually require GPS or wireless transmission.”

The two accounts also converge on the drone’s physical signature and materials, with Al Jazeera saying the aircraft are “constructed from lightweight fibreglass, meaning they emit almost no thermal or radar signature,” while Al-Jazeera Net says experts describe them as made from “lightweight fiberglass” that emits “almost no thermal or radar signature.”

Al-Jazeera Net further claims the drones can “bypass the active protection system Trophy mounted on Israeli Merkava tanks,” and Al Jazeera says the drones “have even managed to bypass the “Trophy” active protection system installed on Israeli Merkava tanks.”

The technology’s lethal effect is illustrated in both Al Jazeera and Al-Jazeera Net through an attack in Taybeh, where an explosive-laden fiber-optic drone struck an Israeli armored unit and killed a named soldier.

“In the skies over the Lebanese town of Taybeh, Israel’s multibillion-dollar defence systems were rendered useless by a spool of cable, according to a report by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet)”

Al Jazeera

Al-Jazeera Net says the deadly capability was “clearly demonstrated during the latest attack in Taybeh town in southern Israel,” where a drone “loaded with explosives and equipped with optical fibers struck an Israeli armored unit, killing soldier Idan Fox and wounding six others,” citing Yedioth Ahronoth’s website.

It adds that when the rescue helicopter arrived, Hezbollah launched “two additional drones,” and that “one exploded a few meters from the helicopter,” while “electronic jamming systems failing” forced ground soldiers to “raise their rifles toward the sky, firing at the incoming threat before it exploded a few meters away.”

Al Jazeera describes the same sequence with slightly different phrasing, saying that in Taybeh “an Israeli medical evacuation helicopter rushed to rescue soldiers wounded in a drone attack,” and then “another unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hurtled towards them.”

Al Jazeera also reports that “With their electronic countermeasures failing, soldiers on the ground were forced to point their rifles at the sky, firing at the incoming threat before it detonated just metres away.”

Both outlets emphasize the operational consequence: Israeli systems were “rendered useless by a spool of cable,” and Al Jazeera says “the chaotic scene underscores a lethal new reality in the escalating conflict.”

Beyond the Taybeh incident, the Lebanon-focused reporting also describes a broader pattern of Hezbollah attacks and the operational reach of drone-kamikaze strikes into Israeli territory.

African Manager, citing AFP, says Hezbollah claimed “about fifteen strikes carried out since Wednesday morning against Israel,” including “the headquarters of an aerospace industry company near Ben Gurion Airport” and “the outskirts of Tel Aviv, up to 120 kilometers south of the border with Lebanon.”

Al-Jazeera Net

It reports that Hezbollah claimed a strike “around 2:00 a.m.” with kamikaze drones against the headquarters of Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI), and that the premises were “not far from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport.”

African Manager also says Hezbollah claimed targeting “the Giv'at base east of the city of Safed, at 3:30” with a “precision missile,” and that another attack at “3:30” targeted “the Northern Command headquarters at the Dado base near Safed” with a “precision missile.”

The same report says Hezbollah claimed that on Tuesday at “5:00 p.m.” it targeted “the radars at Kiryat Eliezer, Haifa's main air defense base,” with “a squadron of kamikaze drones,” and that at “4:30 a.m. on the night from Tuesday to Wednesday” it targeted “the Ein Shemer base, linked to anti-missile air defense.”

In parallel, Masrawy frames the drone threat as a regional “tech attrition” problem, describing “swarms of suicide drones deployed by Iran and Hezbollah” and arguing that “Statistics of the American-Israeli war against Tehran” include “550 Iranian drones test Israeli resilience in a single month.”

The sources portray Israeli forces as improvising defenses while acknowledging a lack of systematic countermeasures to the fiber-optic drone threat.

Al Jazeera says that “In the absence of a systematic military solution,” some Israeli combat units have begun independently developing improvised defenses, including “hanging physical nets over military positions, houses and windows in the hope that the drones will get tangled up in it before detonating.”

Al-Quds Al-Arabi

It adds that “It’s an improvised response… but it’s far from enough,” quoting an Israeli officer, and it reports that senior Israeli military officials “acknowledge they entered the war in Lebanon without sufficient tools to counter this threat.”

Al-Jazeera Net similarly describes improvised defenses, saying some Israeli combat units have independently begun developing “improvised defenses, such as hanging nets over military sites, houses, and windows,” and it quotes an Israeli commander’s dismay at the lack of solutions, with the briefing reduced to “be vigilant, and if you spot a drone, shoot it.”

Masrawy broadens the stakes by describing a “dilemma” in which cheap drones force air defenses to “reinvent themselves,” and it describes Israel’s multi-layer defense systems including “Iron Dome,” “David's Sling,” and “Iron Beam,” a “high-power laser” designed to “shoot down drones at a cost far lower per intercept.”

The combined picture is that, as Hezbollah’s drones continue to operate from southern Lebanon and strike targets described across Israel, the next phase of the conflict hinges on whether Israel can field a systematic countermeasure beyond “nets” and reactive shooting.