How Tactical Drone Technology Has Strengthened IDF Effectiveness in Counterterrorism Operations
Summer 2026
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Israel Defense Forces’ rapid integration of tactical drones since October 7 has significantly improved operational effectiveness across three core areas: intelligence gathering, precision targeting, and force protection. Small and medium unmanned aerial systems now provide persistent surveillance over dense urban terrain, support reconnaissance of subterranean infrastructure, accelerate the transfer of intelligence from sensors to commanders and strike platforms, and reduce the need to expose soldiers during the most dangerous stages of operations. Their integration with artificial intelligence, shared command-and-control networks, and increasingly autonomous systems has further shortened decision and response times. At the same time, the IDF’s growing reliance on drones has generated a continuing cycle of adaptation as adversaries employ electronic warfare, FPV drones, Fiber-optic control systems, and other countermeasures. The resulting competition is driving Israel toward increasingly integrated reconnaissance, strike, electronic-warfare, and counter-drone capabilities. Tactical drones therefore represent an important operational advantage for the IDF, but one that will require continuous technological and doctrinal adaptation to sustain.
Drones have become one of the most transformative military technologies of the 21st century, redefining the modern battlefield. In the wake of the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, and the multi-front war in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is undergoing one of the fastest tactical transformations of any modern military. The rapid transformation stems from small, inexpensive, and increasingly autonomous tactical drones. Integrating tactical drone technology has strengthened the Israel Defense Forces’ effectiveness across three interconnected domains of counterterrorism operations: intelligence gathering, precision targeting, and force protection.
Tactical drones have been fundamental to the IDF, enabling persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) coverage and improving its understanding of complex battlefields. The extensive use of drones was crucial to the IDF’s operations in Gaza. Dense urban terrain, civilians amongst combatants, and around 500 kilometers of subterranean tunnel infrastructure, often known as the “Gaza metro”, made traditional ground reconnaissance both time-consuming and highly dangerous, increasing the value of persistent aerial surveillance. Small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have bridged this gap by providing a vertical perspective that enhances situational awareness, enabling individual soldiers to monitor their immediate surroundings while allowing military leaders to oversee operations across entire districts.
The Israel Defense Forces have been using the drones Hermes 450 (Zik) and Hermes 900 (Kochav) for over two decades, which has shaped the emergence of drone usage. These unmanned aerial systems allow them to obtain massive amounts of data, especially during critical times such as conflict. These drone systems are equipped with software called Server in the Sky (SITS), which runs analytics software and uses computer programs to carry out many automated missions without a pilot on board. It allows groups of surveillance and attack drones to operate over areas such as Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, where they can identify targets, create maps, and quickly share information with Israeli forces during operations.
A new model of the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900 is the Hermes 650, a newer next-generation platform positioned between the 450 and 900, with the capability of achieving multi-mission operations. It can track and monitor movement and terrain, and classify targets in real time, serving as a vital target generator for ground and air operations.
The Israeli Air Force primarily operates the Hermes 650, and special units such as Squadron 144 (“Phoenix”), based at Hatzor Airbase, deploy it to gather intelligence in areas such as Gaza and southern Lebanon. Reporting based on internal IDF documents indicates that the fleet’s visual analytics have been used to expose enemy hideouts and detect ambushes, with the drones’ systems flagging or directly selecting targets for ground units. Central to this capability is Wide Area Persistent Surveillance (WAPS), a module mounted on Hermes 450 and 900 drones that uses ten electro-optical cameras to simultaneously capture roughly 80 square kilometers in real time, about a quarter of the Gaza Strip, allowing continuous tracking of multiple areas across a wide combat zone rather than a single fixed point. WAPS also archives this footage, enabling what the documents describe as “intelligence forensics,” which allows analysts to review the video both live and retrospectively, tracing an object back to its origin or reconstructing a sequence of events after the fact. According to the reporting, this combination of live and archival coverage made the system a highly effective tool for generating targets and intelligence in both Gaza and Lebanon. The documentation also describes built-in automated analysis, including classification and filtering functions referred to as “gatekeepers”, that determine which information gets escalated to a human operator, though the precise mechanics remain unclear.
Tunnels show clearly why drones are so valuable for gathering intelligence. Underground environments degrade GPS, radio links, and conventional imaging, making human reconnaissance dangerous and technically difficult. In Gaza, Israeli forces have reportedly used small drones and robotic systems to inspect and map tunnel spaces before troops enter, reducing the need for immediate human first entry. Some Israeli systems combine scanning, communications relay, and reconnaissance functions, enabling operators to build a clearer picture of subterranean layouts before committing combat engineers or infantry. The IDF has shifted to collaborative drone teams, which usually consist of three to five UAVs and allow each drone to have a specialized role and to solve the problem collaboratively. It gives the opportunity for one drone to focus on real-time surveillance, while another delivers munitions, and while one is hard at work carrying out electronic warfare equipment to jam signals. As they all work together, they create what they have labeled a “mini ecosystem,” allowing soldiers to have information relayed to them at the same time.
One of the most significant changes from the past was the use of drones to provide imagery for human analysts, a process that could sometimes take hours or days to review and extract useful information. Now, the IDF has increasingly combined UAV sensor feeds with artificial intelligence to help detect and notify of threats. The Unified Command-and-Control System helps to compress the time between detecting and providing emergency response. The Military Systems for Command, Control, and Management (Matzpen) unit in the IDF has described the development of a system that connects headquarters, aircrew, and soldiers on the ground so everyone sees the same real-time picture of the battlefield. Because everyone is looking at the same information at the same time, artillery, aircraft, and drones can all be directed at a fast-moving target much quicker than the old way of coordinating between separate units.
The Israel Defense Forces employ advanced artificial intelligence platforms to accelerate target identification and support drone-enabled precision strike operations. Their targeting approach distinguishes between structural targets and human targets, using systems such as ‘The Gospel’ to identify military infrastructure and ‘Lavender’ to identify human targets, assisting in identifying individuals for further intelligence assessment. Once a potential target is identified, intelligence is incorporated into an integrated sensor-to-shooter process, in which surveillance assets, including drones, provide real-time target verification before commanders authorize and execute a precision strike.
The SkyRider unit is an elite tactical drone team within the IDF Artillery Corps that is embedded with infantry units, including special forces and reconnaissance battalions, to support safe maneuvering by acting as “eyes in the sky.” They are trained to operate UAVs that provide real-time aerial views of the battlefield, improving awareness of surrounding terrain and potential threats. The UAVs they use can be controlled remotely or follow pre-programmed autonomous flight paths, making them useful for intelligence gathering, force coordination, and early warning detection. Sky Rider teams primarily operate the Skylark UAV, one of the IDF’s key intelligence tools, which is widely used in major operations due to the accurate information it provides.
One of the clearest and most agreed-upon benefits of using drones has been keeping soldiers safe. IDF officers and defense-tech executives who work closely with frontline units all describe the same basic idea: if a robot can be the first thing to face an unknown threat or battlefield, then a soldier doesn’t have to be. Small quadcopters and combined ground-and-air robots are now expected to go into a building, room, or tunnel first, before any soldier does. They can hover by doors and windows like lookouts, and alert the operator the moment they spot movement.
The XTEND Scorpio 1000 was created in early 2025 and is a rapidly deployable, AI-powered tactical interceptor designed to provide advanced force protection and counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS) capabilities for the IDF. Combining autonomous intelligence with human oversight, the Scorpio 1000 detects, tracks, pursues, and neutralizes hostile drones with exceptional precision in complex urban and battlefield environments. Through its integration with ParaZero’s DefendAir net-launching system, it delivers a highly effective soft-kill solution that captures enemy drones mid-air rather than destroying them, helping to significantly reduce the risk of falling debris and collateral damage in sensitive operational areas. Powered by XTEND’s operating system, the drone is easy to control using a simple point-and-click interface. This lets operators guide it remotely to intercept hostile drones while staying at a safe distance. By combining AI automation, accurate targeting, and operator safety, the Scorpio 1000 provides an effective way to defend against modern drone threats.
Principally, drones haven’t just helped in Gaza; they have also been a huge help on the northern border, where Israel faces constant threats from Hezbollah’s drones and rockets. Because of this, the IDF set up a Northern Command drone school in 2024 to properly train soldiers on both reconnaissance and strike drones, something that used to just be picked up informally. Instructors have soldiers learn basic reconnaissance drones first before they’re allowed to move on to strike drones or loitering munitions. This indicates that the IDF now considers drone operation skills as vital for survival, equally important as rifle shooting or tactical movement.
While drones have given the IDF a strong advantage, adversaries have developed ways to respond and counter that advantage. Hezbollah has increasingly relied on first-person-view (FPV) attack drones, which are connected to their operators by long fiber-optic cables, allowing them to dodge standard jamming and electronic warfare. The IDF has recognized that interception systems are unsuccessful at detecting these drones because FPVs do not rely on radio frequency signals. This has led to a number of IDF casualties, leaving soldiers to improvise their own defense. The IDF has quickly developed new tactics such as using protective netting from soccer nets and farm materials, while the military worked on crafting a more official response.
To combat this problem, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems partnered with SpearUAV to develop a new encapsulated unmanned aerial system (UAS) interceptor designed to give ground forces an organic capability to counter aerial threats while on the move. The system is based on SpearUAV’s Viper I interceptor technology and can be launched from a compact multi-canister launcher mounted directly on combat vehicles. It allows crews to respond immediately to fast-moving, maneuvering, or loitering aerial threats without requiring advance preparation or external air-defense support. This new system is known as the Iron Wasp. The system is deployed directly from armored vehicles, enabling soldiers to respond quickly to hostile drones, including loitering munitions and FPV drones, in real time. Acting as a compact, autonomous aerial shield, it helps protect maneuvering forces while minimizing operational burden on vehicle crews.
Drones have essentially altered the playing field, making a real difference for the Israel Defense Forces in three main ways: intelligence gathering, precision targeting, and force protection. Constant surveillance from the air to subterranean surveillance has given commanders a view of the battlefield that regular ground reconnaissance just cannot match. Combining drone footage with shared command systems and AI has also reduced the time between spotting a threat and striking it. The shift toward sending robots into danger ahead of soldiers has measurably reduced IDF ground forces’ exposure during the most hazardous phases of urban and subterranean combat. Although the IDF has integrated drones successfully, several challenges remain, including jamming and signal interference, enemies building their own drone threats, and unanswered questions about how fair or accountable AI-assisted targeting really is. These are real, growing issues. Ultimately, tactical drones represent a real and measurable gain for the Israel Defense Forces, though that advantage is neither permanent nor uncontested.
Ellie Mashal is an undergraduate at the University of Miami and a Summer 2026 intern at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Sarena Mashal is an undergraduate at the University of Miami and a Summer 2026 intern at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.