Hezbollah hit an Israeli tank with a first-person view drone, the first such use in Lebanon of a weapon that’s become a centerpiece of warfare in Ukraine.
On Thursday, Hezbollah released footage of its FPV drone hunting and striking the turret of an Israeli military Merkava tank on Telegram. The group said the tank was hit at a newly established camp in southern Lebanon. The damage to the tank is unknown, as the clip lacked any follow-up reconnaissance footage.
Whatever the damage, the video marks the first time Hezbollah has used an FPV drone, a weapon that has come to characterize the war in Ukraine. After heavy usage of bomber drones, which would drop grenade-like munitions from above in 2022 and 2023, Russian and Ukrainian forces switched their focus to FPV drones, a cheap weapon far more effective and deadly, as it allows the operator to guide the drone directly into its target.
HOW DRONE WARFARE DEVELOPED IN UKRAINE IN 2025
Russia and Ukraine have produced millions of FPV drones each in the last two years alone. The continued improvements of the drones have created a several-mile-wide kill zone all across the front, with drone operators hunting down any vehicles or soldiers caught in the open. The small, fast-moving, and agile drones are notoriously difficult to shoot down through kinetic means.
Despite their effectiveness, the drones have been conspicuously absent from wars elsewhere in the world, particularly the Middle East. Israeli military tanks going into Gaza and Lebanon in 2023 to 2025 were seen equipped with cages over their turrets, indicating preparations against drone warfare, but the weapons were largely absent from each. FPV drones seem to have first been used in recent weeks in Iraq, when an Iran-backed militia published footage of FPV drones hitting buildings at a U.S. base, then hitting a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter earlier this week.
The successful use of an FPV drone by Hezbollah shows the group has been able to reconstitute itself to some degree since its crippling losses in 2024, and could bode poorly for the Israeli militia as it pushes through with its latest invasion of Lebanon. The previous lack of drone warfare against the Israeli military in its wars could leave its forces vulnerable to the new tactic.
Sources familiar with the matter said that Israeli commanders have noted that Hezbollah is much more aggressive and effective in the current war than in the last. One Israeli military soldier was killed and four were wounded in a Hezbollah anti-tank missile attack reported on Thursday.
The war with Hezbollah is expected by many analysts to last well beyond the war with Iran. Jerusalem likely views the current round as its best chance to rid itself of the implacable militant group, which dealt Israel its biggest defeat in 2006.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz outlined Jerusalem’s general plan in Lebanon on Tuesday, suggesting that the Israeli military would invade Lebanon and occupy all land from the border to the Litani River. Lt. Col. Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center and a 15-year Israeli military Intelligence Corps veteran, predicted to the Washington Examiner that the current war is likely to be much more difficult than the 2024 war.
WHAT DO IRAN PEACE NEGOTIATIONS MEAN FOR ISRAEL’S OPERATION IN LEBANON?
“It’s more difficult because the goal is different,” Zehavi answered when asked if the 2026 war in Lebanon would be more difficult than the last. “The goal in 2024, the ground invasion, not the whole campaign, was to remove the threat of invasion by Hezbollah. This means that IDF maneuvered only very close to the border.
“Now the goal, as the minister of defense just said, is to clear the areas all the way to the Litani River. This is 30 kilometers. It’s a much bigger area,” she said. “It’s a bigger challenge. The goal is different.”
