On the morning of February 18, 2022, the “Ḥassān” drone (named after the martyr Ḥassān Laqqīs) took off from southern Lebanon at 11:40 a.m. on a reconnaissance mission to monitor and gather information on military sites of the Israeli entity in northern occupied Palestine. Despite all the Israeli early warning systems, they could not discover the drone until 12:10, after it reached the occupied city of Ṣafad on its way back.

            At first, the Israeli radars detected a drone in the airspace of occupied Palestine coming from Lebanon, but soon two appeared. The Iron Dome air defense system launched its missiles to intercept them while sirens were activated in the Galilee. Due to the interception’s failure, the Northern Command sent an F-16 fighter jet to accomplish the mission, but its high speed prevented it from closing on the slow drone and it passed next to it without being able to intercept it.

            Apache helicopters were called to ambush the drone north of Lake Tiberias and fired a number of missiles towards it, then it disappeared from the radars. The Israeli army sent teams to search for the remnants of the drone for about two hours, only to discover that it did not fall, rather it returned safely to its base.

            It appeared later that the “Ḥassān” drone used an advanced jamming system that deceived the Israeli radars with two decoys, while the real drone had returned safely to its base after completing its 40-minute mission over a distance of 70 kilometers. Thus according to the  statement Ḥizb Allah.

“On Friday, February 18, 2022, the Islamic Resistance launched the “Ḥassān” drone into the occupied Palestinian territories and toured the targeted areas for forty minutes on a reconnaissance mission that extended along seventy kilometers north of occupied Palestine. Despite all the enemy’s multiple and successive attempts to bring it down, the “Ḥassān” drone returned from the occupied territories safely after it successfully carried out the required mission without being affected by all the enemy’s existing and followed procedures.“

 

            The drone passed through Kiryat Shmona Air Force Base, Dadu Air Force Base, Rosh Pina Airport, Camp Yiftach, Camp Amiad, Camp Philon, Mount Meron Base and completed its mission back to its base next to Mārūn ar-Ra’s town in southern Lebanon.

            The “Ḥassān” drone penetrated high-frequency sensors and accurate receivers, such as the ADS-B monitoring system and overcame the SIGNIT signal detection systems bypassing the Sky Dew balloon that hunts low-flying drones deployed by Israel in northern occupied Palestine.

            This operation showed the decline of the Israeli defense military capacity, which raised great fears among the Israeli leadership, as well as the huge development achieved by the resistance in the field of electronic warfare, which was announced by the Ḥizb Allah Secretary Sayyid Ḥasan Naṣr Allah, when he said: “We are capable of manufacturing drones, and whoever wants, can buy”.

 

            Meanwhile, the Israeli warplanes have unusually intensified their flight activity over Lebanon in an attempt to gather information and discover where the accurate missiles and the drones are stored. Especially given the inability of Israeli drones to fly freely over Lebanon in the past two years, after the resistance had officially activated its own air defense against drones.

 

            Our guest author Ibrahim Muhammad Wahdi is a Syrian military expert and analysts himself living in Aleppo, Syria.

 

 

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