Drone Wars

Iran’s low-tech drones have created a deadly new battlespace, baffling advanced air defense systems and causing havoc across home front and military bases alike. Racing to counter the rise of the UAV, can Israel win the new arms race?

When the Magen David Adom teams reached the soccer field in Hurfeish, a Druze village in northern Israel, they found a war zone.

For a group of tired soldiers who’d stopped to rest, downtime had turned deadly as a Hezbollah drone slammed into the open space just over a mile from the Lebanon border with no warning.

The wounded were strewn everywhere and paramedics performed triage when suddenly, the dormant Red Alert siren howled into life — too late. A second drone exploded among the soldiers and medics, claiming the lives of two soldiers and wounding ten others.