THE TIMES OF ISRAEL; Israel has a major problem on its hands in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has made an unmistakable leap in its drone capabilities and tactics in recent weeks, and is using explosive-laden unmanned aerial vehicles to deadly effect against IDF troops in southern Lebanon. Whatever countermeasures Israel has are clearly insufficient.

First-person view, or FPV, drones launched by Hezbollah found their way through to Israeli troops again and again on Thursday. Two UAV strikes on IDF positions in southern Lebanon left one soldier dead and three wounded. An attack earlier in the day wounded 12 troops on the Lebanon-Israel border.

The attacks have continued since, though with less success, but it seems a matter of time until luck runs out. On Sunday, several Hezbollah drones exploded near IDF troops, but did not cause injuries.

Israel should have seen the threat coming.

After decades of military operations in which troops were secure in the knowledge that anything flying overhead was friendly, the IDF is now scrambling to find technological and tactical solutions to the growing Hezbollah UAV threat, including drones guided by fiber-optic cables that are resistant to jamming.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF promise that a solution will be found, but they admit that it will take time.

Until effective countermeasures are developed and deployed, troops in southern Lebanon will find themselves exposed and hounded by Hezbollah’s FPV attack drones.

But not only are troops at risk; so is Israel’s entire buffer zone approach in Lebanon.

A known threat

The use of drones in war is certainly not new. Militaries have developed and used unmanned attack delivery methods, like explosive-armed balloons, for well over a century.

But over the last decade, drones have assumed an increasingly important role in combat operations. Israel, a UAV innovator itself, had plenty of time to recognize that its enemies would also move in that direction.

As drone technology has been commercialized for the consumer market, terrorist and rebel groups have made effective use of off-the-shelf drones against state militaries. At the same time, both small countries and global powers employed UAVs in ways that indicated a new era of combat was on the horizon.