From Terror Tunnels to Suicide Drones
Military innovations in the current Middle East conflict are changing the nature of warfare and are likely to be widely copied around the world in the future.
When Israel’s October 1973 war ended, many commentators concluded that the Arabs’ Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) had “bent the wings” of the famed Israel Air Force (IAF), which six years earlier, in the Six Day War of June 1967, had completely demolished the air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan—and destroyed some Iraqi aircraft—in a single day. During the 19 days of the October War, by contrast, the SAMs brought down 101 Israeli fighter-bombers—representing almost a third of the IAF’s combat strength—and severely impaired the air force’s ability to help the IDF’s ground troops—which, nonetheless, ended up beating the Egyptian and Syrian armies and their Iraqi and Jordanian auxiliaries.
Over the thirteen months of the current conflict between Israel and the combined forces of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, the Muslim combatants have so far failed to down a single Israeli aircraft. Remarkably, the hundred or so IAF F-16s, F-15s, and F-35 stealth aircraft that ravaged Iran’s air defences, ballistic missile—and possibly drone—factories, and missile stockpiles in a three-hour strike on 27 October emerged unscathed. The IAF assault on the Iranian SAMs was probably spearheaded by Israel’s US-supplied stealth aircraft squadrons.
The Iranian air defences consisted principally of Russian-made S-300 SAMs and probably included at least one S-400 SAM battery, as well as dozens of less sophisticated locally produced SAMs. The even more primitive air defences of Iran’s proxies—Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas—fared no better than those of their sponsor. Over the past 13 months, the IAF has carried out thousands of air attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah personnel and positions in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria—the latter of which is equipped with S-200 and S-300 batteries—and has conducted two massive bombings of Houthi installations in Yemen, without suffering any losses.
What all this means is that sophisticated, modern, US-made aircraft, equipped with the latest air-to-ground missile and electronic counter-measure capabilities, have defeated the Russian-built SAMs. This has revolutionary implications for future wars around the globe. True, over the past few years the Russians have built and deployed S-500 SAMs, which reportedly have anti-ballistic missile capabilities, in Russia, as a sophisticated adjunct to their mainstay S-400 SAM batteries. But the IAF appears to have dramatically demonstrated that the Russian-built air defences—at least those in Muslim hands—are no match for the advanced American-built aerial weaponry utilised by the IAF. Should the Israeli–Iranian conflict expand, this will doubtless affect its contours and outcome. Indeed, the ability of the new American aircraft to take out Russian SAMs has immediate wider pertinence, for example for Russia’s war on Ukraine. The balance of power in the war in eastern Europe may shift if and when Ukraine receives and deploys large numbers of the latest model F-16s—a few of which have already reached Kiev—together with western aircraft that are even more advanced than the F-16s, which were first manufactured in the mid-1970s.
Benny Morris
But the Israel–Iran–Hezbollah war has also seen the large-scale introduction of another aerial weapon with global implications, the “suicide drone”: an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Reconnaissance drones have been in use around the world since the 1970s. But the suicide drone—an AUV with an explosive warhead designed to crash into its target, directed by GPS or by an operator with a joystick—is new. Israel had already used suicide drones before the current war, in a number of operations against specific Hamas and Hezbollah targets, usually in targeted assassinations. Suicide drones came into use in large numbers by both sides in the Russian-Ukraine war whose current phase began in 2022, and have emerged as a major factor in the current war in the Middle East. They can be expected to figure prominently in any future war.
Iran has equipped Hezbollah, the Houthis, as well as various Shi’ite militias in Syria and Iraq, with Shahed 136 and Ababil (or Mirsad) 1, 2, and 3 suicide drones and variants on these, and Iran itself and its proxy groups have used the drones in attacks on Israel over the past 13 months. Shahed 136s were among the 300-odd projectiles employed in Iran’s massive aerial assault on Israel in April 2024. The delta-winged Shahed 136 can cost as little as $20,000 USD to produce, contains a 50-kilogramme warhead, and has a range of up to 2,500 kilometres. But none of the Shaheds used in the attack appear to have reached Israel, having been shot down over Jordan by American or Israeli SAMs or aircraft.
But some of the smaller, less sophisticated, and much cheaper drones used by Hezbollah, such as the Mirsad 1, have proven highly effective. Over the past months, such drones have flown over Israeli towns and villages in western Galilee and areas south of Haifa for relatively long periods before either hitting their targets, being shot down, or ineffectually crashing to the ground. These drones have terrorised hundreds of thousands of Israelis, who have had to flee to bomb shelters and “safe” rooms—sometimes without receiving an early warning from the authorities. Over the past two months, Hezbollah has launched these drones every day, both singly and in small swarms, sometimes in combination with rocket barrages designed to baffle radar operators. They present a serious challenge to Israeli air defences. In October 2024, one Mirsad 1 managed to reach a Golani infantry brigade base some 40 kilometres south of the Lebanese border, without triggering an alert from the home defence system. The drone hit the base’s dining hall, killing four and wounding sixty soldiers. Another Mirsad successfully hit Benjamin Netanyahu’s private home even further south, in Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast, causing minor damage but no casualties.
The Hezbollah drones are small and fairly slow at only 200 kph, fly close to the ground, and carry only five-kilogramme warheads, though they also pack hundreds of steel pellets. Israel has found them difficult to intercept. Israel’s Iron Dome “Tamir” missiles appear to be ineffective against them. F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships, which are far slower than the SAMs, have managed to shoot down many, though in most cases only after a protracted, 20–40-minute chase. The IDF usually downs three out of every four drones launched by Hezbollah, and the ones that evade destruction generally explode harmlessly in empty fields. But Hamas and Hezbollah drones have occasionally killed or injured IDF ground troops. Israel has had to equip many of its Merkava tanks operating in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon with makeshift “roofs” to prevent drones from reaching the bodies of the tanks.
The IDF has also deployed drones on a massive scale during the current war, both for reconnaissance and for attack. In addition to small suicide drones, Israel uses attack drones that carry air-to-ground missiles—to good effect, as they have killed dozens of local Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon in targeted assassinations.
In recent years, Israeli scientists have been working assiduously to develop a more effective response to Hezbollah’s drones and to the larger, long-range drones directed at Israel by Iran and its proxies in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. Most of the drones launched from Iraq and Syria have been shot down over Jordan, but in July a Houthi drone, flying over a thousand miles, penetrated Israeli defences and killed an Israeli civilian in Tel Aviv, and the Houthis have also periodically bombarded Israel’s southern port of Eilat with suicide drones. There have been recent reports that “Iron Beam,” a laser defence system developed by the Israeli defence contractor Rafael in partnership with Lockheed Martin and designed to shoot drones or rockets out of the sky with a laser beam, at the very low cost of $2–5 USD per shot, is to be deployed operationally from late 2025.
During the October 1973 War, the Egyptians and Syrians deployed masses of SAM batteries to neutralise the IAF since their own air forces were no match for the Israeli air force. Likewise, the Arab ground forces deployed thousands of Soviet-built, Sagger infantry-held anti-tank missiles to counter the IDF armoured divisions against which their tank forces had proved unable to prevail in the past. The Egyptian infantrymen successfully damaged or destroyed hundreds of IDF tanks, especially during the first two days of their cross–Suez Canal offensive of 6–7 October and the initial, unsuccessful IDF counterattack against the Egyptians of 8 October. During this current war, Hamas and Hezbollah have deployed the more sophisticated Russian-made Kornet infantry-held anti-tank missiles and RPGs to counter IDF armour. In the north, the Kornets have also been used to destroy buildings and military positions in and around Israel’s border settlements.
In response, many of Israel’s Mark 3 and Mark 4 Merkava tanks have been equipped with Trophy, aka “Windbreaker,” active protection systems. The radar-guided Trophy automatically detects incoming projectiles and fires mini-projectiles of its own to destroy the offending projectiles—Kornets or RPGs—before they can hit the tank. But to judge from the number of Israeli tankmen injured and killed fighting in the Gaza Strip over the past year, the Trophy system has not proven wholly effective. While the IDF routinely publishes the names of its dead within 24–48 hours, it has never publicly stated how many armoured vehicles have been disabled or destroyed in Gaza or along Israel’s northern border. Hamas and Hezbollah have periodically issued statements claiming that they have knocked out IDF tanks, but these announcements have not always been truthful.
The relative success of the Kornets and the RPGs has been the result of recent upgrades. The original Kornets, unveiled by Russia in the 1990s, had a maximum range of 5 kilometres, but over the past year, Kornet-EMs—the upgraded Kornets in Hezbollah hands—have proved able to knock out targets at twice that range. For some reason, at the start of the current war, neither Israeli intelligence nor IDF combat units appear to have been aware that Hezbollah was in possession of these new Kornets, even though one or two of them had already been used against Israeli targets prior to 7 October 2023. The upgraded Kornets used in the current war have repeatedly hit the IAF’s vital air traffic control base on Mount Meron near Safad and demolished many buildings in Israeli settlements just south of the Lebanese border. Hezbollah has further upgraded the Kornets by mounting them on a stand with two firing tubes, thus enabling two missiles to be fired consecutively, in a rapid two-step that can catch a target tank out, leaving it no time to reload its Trophy projectiles before the second Kornet hits. Hamas—and possibly Hezbollah—have also upgraded the traditional RPGs by doubling their original shaped (i.e. hollow) charge payloads, thus greatly increasing their penetrative power.
John Lloyd
Another major feature of the current war, especially in the Gaza Strip, has been Hamas’s very effective use of the 700-kilometre tunnel system built over the past two decades at a depth of 10, 20, and even 50 metres underground, beneath and between the Strip’s cities. Entry to and exit from the tunnels is afforded by shafts descending from residential buildings, schools, mosques, and hospitals. Over the past 13 months, Hamas fighters have used the tunnels as bomb shelters and command centres, arms and food depots, and jump-off points from which to attack advancing IDF troops. The tunnels—some of which are linked, while others are stand-alone structures—have generally proved invulnerable to aerial and artillery attack and have had to be dealt with by special forces and sapper units, using dogs and mini-drones. Cleaning them out has proved slow and costly: after a year of battle, less than 50% of the tunnel network has been “cleansed” and demolished by IDF sappers. The IDF has been hampered by the suspected or feared presence of Israeli hostages whom Hamas has been using as human shields. The remaining tunnel system explains why Hamas is still in control of much of the Gaza Strip.
Tunnel warfare is almost as old as civilisation. In 332 BC, during the Macedonian–Persian war, the Macedonians besieged Gaza and both sides made use of tunnels. In more modern times, tunnels were prominently used during World War One. On the Western Front, both sides used sappers—who were often former coal miners—to dig tunnels under the other sides’ trenches and bunkers and then blow them up. Tunnels were also routinely used by the Vietcong, as depots, jump-off points, and hideouts, in the American–Vietnamese war of the 1960s and early 1970s.
During the first two decades of the current century, both Hamas and Hezbollah constructed tunnels that crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon respectively. Hamas also built tunnels between the Strip and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, through which they smuggled arms, ammunition, and personnel. Israel—with the eventual help of the Egyptian authorities—sealed or destroyed most of these tunnels in 2014, during an earlier bout of IDF–Hamas hostilities. The secret Hamas and Hezbollah cross-border tunnels into Israel were built in preparation for surprise attacks on Israeli troops and settlements. In 2018 and early 2019, the IDF discovered and destroyed Hezbollah’s cross-border tunnels after local Israeli villagers heard continual digging and banging coming from underground.
But this left Hamas’s vast tunnel network inside the Gaza Strip, which IDF Intelligence only partially divined. Over the past twelve months, the IDF has cleared and destroyed some of this network and over the past six weeks, it has destroyed many of Hezbollah’s less numerous tunnels, dug into the geologically more difficult, rocky terrain of southern Lebanon. (The Hamas tunnel-diggers enjoyed the benefit of the much softer rock and sand formations of the Gaza Strip.) When IDF units began invading southern Lebanon at the start of October, they discovered that the Hezbollah tunnels were packed with weapons, food, fuel, and ammunition, and contained extensive sleeping accommodations, clearly in preparation for an eventual invasion of northern Israel resembling Hamas’s assault on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. Many of the tunnels were discovered only a few hundred metres from the Israel–Lebanon border fence and less than a kilometre from some of the border-hugging Israeli settlements. Hamas’s successful use of tunnel warfare is likely to be copied by other groups—and possibly states—beyond the Middle East.
One major feature of this current war in the Middle East—as well as of the Ukraine–Russia war—is the paucity of munitions. In Israel, the problem boils down to 155 mm artillery shells—since the American-built 155 mm howitzers are the mainstay of the IDF artillery corps—and the Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptor missiles. According to a recent report in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Israeli troops in both Gaza and southern Lebanon suffered casualties as they cleared out urban neighbourhoods and villages because they advanced without sufficiently “clearing the way” with artillery barrages that would have eradicated Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist squads lying in ambush and detonated the IEDs they had planted. Both Israel itself and the United States, together with various European states, including Serbia, have ramped up production of 155 mm shells but both Israel and Ukraine are suffering thanks to existing shortfalls.
Likewise, the depleted stocks of Tamir missiles, each of which costs more than $50,000 USD, may portend future rationing. During the first ten months of the war, Israel mainly had to contend with Hamas rocketry, which was generally very limited—except on 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel in one massive barrage. But since the intensification of the war across the Israel–Lebanon border, Israel has faced Hezbollah’s far larger rocket stockpiles—Hezbollah launches an average 100–200 rockets a day, alongside a dozen or more drones. Missile shortages may force Israel to curtail the use of Iron Dome Tamirs in defence of towns and villages and restrict their use to protection of the country’s main cities, vital infrastructure, such as power and desalination plants, and IDF bases, especially the vital air bases.
The current conflict in the Middle East is a combination of conventional warfare—between Israel and Iran—and asymmetrical warfare—between Israel and the terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah. Both types of conflict suggest the possible course of future wars. The first foreshadows long-range wars fought by states deploying air forces and unmanned projectiles but avoiding the clash of ground forces—though long-range commando raiding may yet take place between Israel and Iran, if it hasn’t already secretly done so. The second type is characterised by close-quarter ground forces’ combat between state and non-state actors, supplemented by continuous aerial attacks by air forces and armed drones. It is impossible to predict who will win the prospective open-ended wars of attrition between the IDF and Hamas in Gaza on the one front and Hezbollah in Lebanon on the other—or even what “winning” would look like. Similarly, how the direct, long-distance clash between Israel and Iran will develop is uncertain.
But in the meantime, both the problems and the innovative equipment that characterise the current Middle East conflict are likely to be noted and analysed by generals, strategists, and tacticians in the region itself and beyond.
