An Israeli drone expert has warned that ‘Israel’ is lagging behind in confronting Hezbollah’s rapidly evolving drone capabilities, admitting “we woke up too late” to a threat for which there is still “no hermetic solution,” according to remarks cited by Maariv from an interview on Radio 103FM on Wednesday.
Rotem Rogovsky, CEO of Skypro and a co-founder of the Israeli army’s drone unit, said Hezbollah’s use of explosive drones has already become embedded in its combat doctrine and is accelerating. “It is already a problem,” he said, noting a steady increase in operational use along the northern front.
He stressed that the Zionist entity currently lacks a comprehensive response. “There is no longer a hermetic solution to what Hezbollah is doing to us,” Rogovsky said, explaining that forces on the Lebanese border are often left to improvise, using small arms fire and even physical barriers to counter incoming drones.
Rogovsky pointed to the accessibility and low cost of such weapons as a key factor behind their proliferation. According to him, some drones are assembled from commercially available components that are inexpensive and easy to obtain, making them difficult to track or intercept.
He warned that the implications extend beyond Lebanon, with other armed groups in the region closely monitoring and potentially replicating Hezbollah’s tactics. Modern battlefields, he said, are increasingly defined by elusive, fast-moving threats that combine drones with other forms of attack.
While a new counter-drone system is under development and could be deployed within months, Rogovsky cautioned it would not offer a complete solution, citing the speed and small size of the drones.
Looking ahead, he said future conflicts will be dominated by unmanned systems. “The next war will be a war of robots and drones,” he said, emphasizing that the key challenge is no longer detection, but the ability to respond and neutralize threats within seconds.
Israeli media outlets are increasingly sounding the alarm over the expanding threat posed by Hezbollah’s drone capabilities, warning that current defenses are struggling to keep pace with the group’s evolving tactics along the northern front.
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Reflecting on lessons from the war in Ukraine, Rogovsky acknowledged Israel’s delayed response: “The Ukrainians—you have to take your hat off to them. They work amazingly. Unfortunately, we woke up too late, and now we are trying to catch up as quickly as possible.”
Eralier on Wednesday, Hezbollah released a new video showing a drone strike targeting an Israeli Merkava in the vicinity of the Khirbet Al-Manara site on the southern Lebanese border.
The strike, dated on Tuesday, May 12, is one of several operations carried out by Hezbollah’s Islamic Resistance as part of the group’s Eaten Straw Battle.
Source: Maariv (translated and edited by Al-Manar)