While much of the attention during the ongoing war with Iran has focused on ballistic missiles and their destructive potential, Tehran’s drones pose a different — and in some ways more complex — challenge.

Since the war began on February 28, Iran has launched some 550 drones at Israel, according to the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS), alongside hundreds of ballistic missiles. In the broader regional war, thousands more have been fired at Gulf states and US assets.

At the same time, Israel has continued to contend with daily unmanned aerial vehicle incursions from Hezbollah on the northern front, adding a constant, closer-range threat.

While slower-moving and usually less destructive than rockets or missiles, drones can pose a challenge due to the difficulty involved in detecting and tracking them, and the need to deploy various assets to intercept the weapons, which travel differently from unguided projectiles that follow a predictable parabolic arc.

“Drone warfare now complicates all aspects of operations,” Dara Massicot, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Times of Israel, “from allocating air force assets to shoot them down, to force protection considerations, and how to protect critical infrastructure.”

Because they take hours to reach Israel, Iranian drones rarely pose a major threat here, though they have been a constant menace to the Gulf, which has had to deal with over 3,500 drone attacks since the war began, according to the INSS.

In contrast, Hezbollah’s drones, coming from neighboring Lebanon, traditionally posed a greater danger due to the limited time for detection and interception. As of last week, the terror group had fired over 100 drones at Israel since entering the war earlier this month, according to the IDF.

Military officials say the Israel Defense Forces has seen increased success in intercepting Hezbollah’s drones during the current war, though the combined pressure of attacks on multiple fronts has imposed a constant strain that keeps air defenses engaged around the clock.

With these weapons marking warfare’s bleeding edge, an arms race is taking place between drone technology and innovations meant to combat them, from active air defenses to hacking into the machines and taking them over.

According to Dominika Kunertova, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, recent years of drone warfare have been marked by “fast-paced developments” — most notably, a shift from drones serving as platforms for launching munitions to becoming the munitions themselves with the rise of one-way attack, or suicide, drones.

Unlike traditional drones, which return after completing a mission, these systems are designed to crash into their targets and are rigged with explosives that detonate on impact, functioning as both the delivery system and the weapon itself.

Much like it does in its response to traditional munitions like rockets and missiles, Israel relies on a multilayered defense system to counter drones — one built on the understanding........

© The Times of Israel