“In this new military landscape, a light, cheap and small weapon, worth only a tiny fraction of the price of a tank, can unsettle its crew, strike its sensitive systems, or disable its movement.”
In southern Lebanon, tanks no longer move as they once did, as though they still hold the final word on the battlefield. The steel beast that once imposed itself through firepower and thick armour now advances with measured caution, sometimes halting altogether and taking cover. The danger no longer lies only in an anti-tank fighter hiding behind hills or between buildings. It now hangs directly above the tank, where a small drone, barely visible or audible, circles overhead with enough cameras and sensors to search for a weak point before delivering a precise strike from above.
In this new reality, a light, cheap and compact weapon can disrupt a tank crew, damage sensitive systems, or immobilise the vehicle, even temporarily, pushing it from the posture of attack into one of caution. In an age where superiority no longer belongs solely to whoever possesses the heaviest metal, but to whoever sees first and strikes from unexpected angles, the tank is no longer the crowned king of ground warfare, it once was before the war in Ukraine. That decline is now playing out again in the battlefields of southern Lebanon.
How the Ukraine War Changed the Tank Battlefield
The war in Ukraine has been raging for years, and its character continues to evolve. In 2024, Reuters described in a detailed report how first-person view drones, known as FPV drones, transformed the shape of warfare. These drones moved vehicles and armoured units at a near-daily risk. One Ukrainian tank commander told the agency that neither Ukrainian nor Russian tanks dared enter open ground anymore because they would face a barrage of drones. A T-72 tank, he said, had effectively been reduced to hiding and operating as stationary artillery.
FPV drones depend on the operator, who sees through the front-mounted camera in real time, as though sitting inside the aircraft or playing a video game. This gives the drone a high degree of manoeuvrability and precision, whether for reconnaissance or for directing a strike onto a specific target. These drones are often low cost compared with conventional weapons, and they can be fitted with an explosive charge to function as suicide drones that crash into their targets and explode.
These drones have emerged strongly in modern warfare because they combine low cost, precision and flexibility. They can strike vehicles, fortified positions and personnel, while flying low and weaving through obstacles, making them difficult to detect in some cases. Their range and payload remain limited compared with larger drones, and they can be affected by jamming when they rely on wireless communication.
“The use of drones against tanks and armoured vehicles is not just a tactical detail. It can be seen as a reversal in the function of the tank itself.”
Using such drones against tanks and armoured vehicles is not merely a battlefield adjustment. It amounts to a reversal in the very role of the tank, from manoeuvre to survival. More importantly, thousands of precise drones, each costing only hundreds or thousands of dollars, are now capable of paralysing tanks worth between six and ten million dollars each.
Hezbollah’s Approach in Southern Lebanon
The concept has proven exportable. In a recent report by Defence News, experts said Hezbollah is fighting Israel in southern Lebanon through what they described as a Ukrainian-style war. The group began publishing footage captured by its suicide drones as they crashed into Israeli Merkava tanks advancing in the south, claiming to have destroyed or disabled 20 of them.
Hezbollah’s opening attack on 2 March came through a combined strike of drones and rockets. Reuters reported, citing sources, that the group was then launching more than 60 rockets and drones per day, before exceeding double that number two days later. By 19 March, Hezbollah had claimed more than 280 attacks involving rockets, shells, guided missiles and drones targeting settlements in northern Israel and Israeli army positions in southern Lebanon.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s drone use does not appear to match the scale or intensity seen in Ukraine. Still, it reflects a serious effort to exploit what can be called the drone economy: the use of cheap, small drones to tilt the cost equation of war in favour of the weaker side. In the past, producing meaningful military effects required expensive platforms such as fighter aircraft or high-cost guided missiles. Today, reconnaissance, strikes and attrition can be carried out with drones costing only hundreds or thousands of dollars, while forcing the enemy to expend far more expensive defences and munitions.
Ukraine purchased and produced more than 1.5 million FPV drones in 2024 and planned to raise that figure to around 4.5 million in 2025 with a budget exceeding 2.6 billion dollars. This means armies are no longer thinking only about weapon types, but about how many systems they can produce, consume and replace. The drone is no longer just a technical item. It has become part of a war economy built on abundance, speed and industrial availability.
The Logic of Asymmetric Attrition
From here emerges the equation of asymmetric attrition: a cheap Hezbollah weapon forcing Israel into an expensive defence. An Iranian Shahed drone costs between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars, while a single Patriot interceptor missile costs around 4 million dollars. The issue is no longer only whether the drone can be shot down, but what it costs to shoot it down, and how many times the defender can repeat that before depleting stockpiles and budgets. This is why there is a growing shift towards cheaper defensive solutions such as guns, interceptor drones and laser systems, rather than permanent reliance on more expensive missiles.
“The drone is no longer just a technical object. It is part of a war economy built on abundance, speed and industrial availability.”
In footage released by Hezbollah on 4 March, a fighter was shown preparing a drone in a densely wooded area. Some experts identified it as a Shahed 101 drone, with the possibility that it may be locally produced. This model is smaller and lighter, closer to short to medium range tactical suicide drones, unlike the more famous and larger Shahed 136, which was designed for longer range attacks. Some versions of the Shahed 101 use an electric motor that reduces noise and thermal signature, though this comes at the cost of size, range and payload.
Local production is crucial in this context. The economics of drones are not only about total cost, but also about supply chains. The real value of such systems is not measured by the price of the drone as it leaves the factory, but by the user’s ability to secure motors, batteries, electronic chips, cameras and communications systems in large quantities, at speed, and without interruption. A drone may look cheap on paper, but it becomes more expensive and less effective if its components depend on a fragile foreign supplier or on commercial markets vulnerable to sanctions, restrictions or shipping bottlenecks.
Fibre Optic Drones and a New Threat to Israel
This is where fibre optic drones enter the picture as one of the latest threats facing Israel, and they have recently been used in southern Lebanon. Little is yet known about the scale of Hezbollah’s deployment of them, but over time, they could become a core feature of this war if they can be produced in large numbers.
Fibre optic drones are essentially small FPV suicide drones. But instead of receiving commands and transmitting video via radio waves, they remain connected to the operator through a thin fibre optic cable that unwinds from a spool during flight. This gives them two decisive advantages. First, they are nearly immune to conventional electronic jamming because their commands travel through a cable isolated from the electromagnetic field. Second, they transmit a clear image, making them highly effective against targets hidden between buildings or inside trenches.
In Ukraine, this category emerged directly in response to the war of attrition between the two sides. The war between Russia and Ukraine can be understood as a cat-and-mouse contest between drones and anti-drone jamming. Fibre optic drones flourished because they kept operating even under dense electronic warfare conditions.
These drones do, however, carry significant drawbacks. Their range is tied to the length of the cable, which can snap. The spool adds weight and reduces payload, and the drone itself may snag on obstacles. Even so, Ukraine’s imports of optical fibre rose more than twentyfold between 2021 and 2025. That figure shows that fibre material itself has become a strategic element in the drone race.
The Tactics Used to Trap the Merkava
The campaign against Israeli tanks has not been limited to drones. As the Merkava entered southern Lebanon, Hezbollah adopted new guerrilla tactics through small cells that strike and then melt back into the terrain, using Russian Kornet missiles and Iranian Almas missiles.
The Kornet missile poses a conventional and direct threat to Merkava tanks because it is an anti-armour missile designed to penetrate armour from relatively long distances. Its name became especially prominent after the 2006 war, when Hezbollah fighters managed to hit several Merkava tanks, including modern versions. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies explained that several of those tanks were struck by anti-tank missiles, with the Kornet among the most prominent. This exposed the fact that even a heavy tank is not fully protected when facing well-planned missile ambushes or attacks from suitable angles.
“The Almas missile is widely seen as an Iranian version of the Israeli Spike family, which makes it more advanced in guidance and flexible engagement.”
The Iranian Almas missile presents a different type of danger. It is widely regarded as an Iranian version of the Israeli Spike missile family, making it more advanced in guidance and more flexible in engagement. There are indications that Hezbollah has used it against Israeli targets in various confrontations over the past few years. While the Kornet relies on direct heavy impact against armour, the Almas provides better capability to deal with targets precisely and from more difficult angles, increasing pressure on the Merkava even when active protection systems such as Trophy are present. A Trophy is fitted to tanks and armoured vehicles to detect incoming projectiles and intercept them.
Taken together, drones are not a standalone substitute but part of an integrated combat system. The tank is pressured by the missile and the ground ambush, while the drone adds overhead vision and then the possibility of a top attack. In this way, Merkava tanks face three interconnected layers of threat that work together to steadily reduce the tank’s value on a complex battlefield such as southern Lebanon.
First Layer: Detection and Exposure
The first of these layers is surveillance and detection above the battlefield. Even when unarmed, the drone performs an important function. It strips the tank of its relative concealment and element of surprise, exposing its movement, direction, stopping points and manoeuvre patterns between buildings and narrow roads. This gives Hezbollah a constantly updated, real-time picture of the battlefield, enabling it to direct artillery, rocket fire or anti-tank missiles at the most suitable moment. In an environment such as the villages of the south, where streets are narrow and cover is abundant, the possession of a flying eye becomes decisive.
Second Layer: Direct Strike from Above
The second layer is direct attack from above or from the tank’s weakest armoured angles. Tanks were traditionally designed to withstand frontal and side hits. Drone warfare introduced a different threat by targeting the roof and upper turret, where armour is thinner. Circulating videos suggest Hezbollah is seeking to exploit the vulnerability of the upper section of armoured targets. This does not necessarily mean total destruction of the tank, but it can be enough to remove it from battle by disabling optics, damaging surveillance and targeting systems, or forcing the crew to withdraw.
Third Layer: Saturation and Exhaustion
The third layer is saturation and exhaustion, perhaps the most dangerous at the operational level. The tank does not face a single threat in isolation. It enters a battlefield where it may simultaneously face guided missiles, reconnaissance drones, suicide drones, rocket salvos, mortar fire and possibly improvised explosive devices. In such an environment, the problem is not just armour penetration, but cumulative pressure on the crew, on the active protection systems, and on the tank’s ability to maintain coherent situational awareness under a stream of synchronised threats. As this pressure is repeated, the tank becomes less capable of distinguishing real danger from deception, slower in movement, and more inclined to seek shelter or stop altogether.
How Israel Is Responding
In response to these emerging threats, Rafael has developed a new version of the Trophy system designed to be more effective against attacks coming from above. Israel is also working on a different defensive layer in the form of a drone dome system, which combines radar, wireless signal detection devices, cameras and electronic jamming within a unified command and control centre. The idea is to detect the small drone and then sever the connection between it and its operator. Fibre optic drones, however, present a challenge to this system because they do not rely on wireless waves but on a cable carrying commands and video, reducing the effectiveness of conventional jamming against them.
“The idea behind the drone dome is to detect the small drone and then cut the connection between it and its operator.”
A third defensive layer is the laser, as in the Iron Beam system, which is intended to bring down small targets such as drones and short range rockets at a far lower operating cost than conventional interceptor missiles. But the laser is not a magic solution. It requires a direct line of sight, and its effectiveness may fall in smoke and dust or during simultaneous large scale attacks. It is therefore treated as an additional layer within an integrated defensive architecture, not as a single substitute for everything else.
There are also metal cages mounted over tanks, a simple solution seen in the war in Ukraine and possibly used by the Israelis as well. Their purpose is to detonate the drone’s charge before it strikes the armour directly, or at least to reduce its effect.
Yet none of this has restored tank warfare to what it once was. The war in Ukraine is now widely seen as a warning model for tanks of what can become a massacre if they enter a drone kill zone, a reality that has stripped them of their traditional place in ground warfare before the arrival of the drone age.
Hezbollah’s Strategic Aim
In the end, Hezbollah’s unequal war against Israel rests on trying to strip the stronger side of its advantages rather than matching it in those areas of superiority. It is not seeking an open conventional tank war or broad territorial control. It is trying instead to slow progress, raise the cost, scatter attention and turn every Israeli movement into a risk. The objective is not to destroy Israeli power in one blow, but to gradually dismantle its effectiveness over time: from a tank that hesitates to advance, to a crew operating under permanent threat, to exposed supply lines, to operational decisions that take longer because even the sky is no longer safe.
“Hezbollah’s unequal war against Israel is built on stripping the stronger side of its advantages rather than matching it at its points of superiority.”
This is the logic of modern asymmetric warfare: making a great power less free to use its power. To achieve this, Hezbollah relies on small, flexible cells distributed across familiar terrain, striking and then withdrawing while leaving drones to track movement and identify the right moment to attack.
Will Hezbollah succeed in the end? That depends on two central factors. The first is whether drone production lines and missile supply can continue. The second is how long Israelis are willing to endure a prolonged war that is expensive both economically and in human lives. War has never been a purely military affair. It is also a matter of who can wear the other side down to the final moment. Here, the technically weaker side can prevail in a long war if the necessary conditions are in place.
