「時間がかかる」イスラエルの告白：露呈する危険な防衛ギャップ

On 28th April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed what operators on the ground already knew. He announced that he had ordered a special “national project” to counter the growing threat of drones used by Hezbollah. He said, “It will take time — but we are on it.” This announcement, the second addressing this issue in under 24 hours, was not a message of confidence. This was an acknowledgement. An acknowledgement that there is a counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) capability gap that is becoming harder to conceal. Over the last 5 years, drone signal jamming and counter jamming technologies have jockeyed for superiority on the front lines. New communication signals led to new jamming technologies which in turn led to new counter jamming technologies. Often, rapid cutting-edge innovation in this space has come from battalion level combat troops, as the success of effective C-UAS operations has become quite literally the most important matter of life and death on the front lines.On the surface, Israel looks well-equipped to deal with UAS threats. Its multi-layer C-UAS defence comprises Rafael’s Drone Dome, Elbit’s ReDrone system and many more invaluable systems. This electronic warfare (EW) cat-and-mouse game has been played on battlefields around the world thus far. However, new changes to this game reveal an unsettling gap in Israel’s defences, namely in the form of wired first-person-view (FPV) drones.FPV drone with a spool trailing fibre optic cable as it flies.First used widely in Ukraine, they now have appeared in Lebanon. In recent weeks, Hezbollah has released multiple videos showing small FPV drones homing in on Israeli tanks and other targets across southern Lebanon. The drones have become Hezbollah’s main method of attack against Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since the latest ceasefire took effect in mid-April. The Israeli Air Force acknowledged that the scale of these attacks was a challenge, admitting to a gap in capability - leading to its inability to “hermetically stop” these attacks. So, what capability does one of the most capable air forces in the world lack?First and foremost, these drones are incredibly cheap at around $300-$400 per unit. The cheapest per unit kill cost of the Drone Dome’s laser-based “hard-kill” system is estimated at $1,000-$3,500. While significantly more cost-effective than $40,000 Tamir interceptors of the traditional Iron Dome system, it is still a tenfold difference. In order to bring parity to the cost war, signal jammers (“soft-kill”) systems have been developed. Radio frequency jamming has negligible cost and as such, jamming systems have been rushed into service for this very reason.War, however, waits for no jamming system. To counter signal jamming, Hezbollah have moved onto fielding fibre-optic-guided drones. These drones, also known as “wired” drones, operate through a physical connection using a thin fibre-optic cable that unspools from a reel onboard the drone during the flight. This physical tether removes the need for radio frequency communication to control the drone and therefore, renders radio frequency signal jammers superfluous. Their lack of signal emissions means that they are difficult to detect and almost impossible to disrupt using conventional EW tools. Traditional electronic warfare – the backbone of most C-UAS architecture – has become obsolete overnight.These are not high-tech solutions. Electronics were wired long before they were wireless. The fibre-optic cables being used by front-line operators are not some high-grade specialty cables specifically tailor-made for this purpose. Any cable light enough and able to carry a signal can be used. This is the kind of pure battlefield adaptation that happens when innovation is driven at the tactical level purely out of necessity. No man’s land in the age of wired FPV drone warfare.In Ukraine, individual battalions are hiring FPV drone makers to build cheap, scalable drones customised for their specific battlefield situation. This ground-up innovation in drone warfare is inherently significantly faster than traditional defence procurement and institutional acquisition processes. Benchmarking the conflict in Ukraine, Hezbollah has adapted a similarly swift model and that speed is what is exposing the gaps in the IDF’s capabilities. Cheap, rapidly adaptable systems are being deployed faster than structured military institutions such as the IDF can respond.As stated before, the asymmetry is economic as much as it is technical. Producing an FPV drone costs a fraction of what it costs to intercept one, let alone the damage caused by a failure to intercept. A defender absorbing that exchange rate at scale will eventually exhaust either its inventory or its budget (we are looking at you, U.S. Department of Defense). The IDF has itself already ordered 5,000 FPV drones from Israeli firm XTEND for use by ground forces – a recognition that the same logic applies offensively. However, defensive solutions have lagged significantly.Thus, this new drone project does not exist in isolation. It reflects growing concern over the increasing use of unmanned aerial systems in regional conflicts, and the inadequate methods of countering these systems. Netanyahu framed the initiative within a wider defence doctrine that included the new acquisition of F-35 and F-15IA squadrons. This framing is telling. This suggests that the drone problem is being treated as a strategic issue worthy of a comprehensive solution on par with the latest 5th generation fighter jets, rather than a single procurement fix. Netanyahu announced that Israel will allocate an additional $120 billion to the defence budget over the next decade, aiming to produce more of its own armaments and reduce dependence on foreign countries. Domestic production capacity is the right long-term answer. But the threat is here now, and the procurement timelines are not. Netanyahu’s repeated statements expose the fundamental tension in modern C-UAS operations: the pace of battlefield innovation is running ahead of institutional response. The side that can iterate in days has a fundamental structural advantage over the side that take months in developing and years in fielding solutions. That is not a gap that can be closed with money alone. It requires procurement reform, faster integration cycles, and a willingness to field imperfect solutions quickly rather than wait for perfect ones.For defence tech developers, the demand signal is unambiguous. Fibre-optic counter-drone solutions are needed now, not to be fielded sometime in the “latter 2030s.” The question is whether the institutions interested in buying them can move at the speed today’s battlefield demands.Thank you for reading. We always welcome fresh perspectives and new contributions. If you are interested in writing for the Fox and Lion or have a piece that you would like to publish with us, please feel free to email us. We warmly welcome active and former servicemembers, and members of the defence tech community. 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