Jerusalem (AFP)

A pioneering force in the use of unmanned military aircraft, Israel today sees its technological superiority challenged by Iran and its Lebanese Hezbollah allies, who are also developing drones for military use.

The last week was revealing of this complex celestial billiards.

Israel bombed a Syrian village on August 24, claiming to "counter" an attack on the Iranian "kamikaze" drone. The following day, two drones, Israeli according to Lebanon, fell in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah; then, on August 28, the Lebanese army fired on Israeli drones flying over Lebanon.

In Iraq, a paramilitary force with numerous pro-Iranian armed groups in August accused Israel of a drone attack on one of its bases.

Israel has not claimed the paternity of the drones that fell in Beirut, but claimed that Hezbollah was trying to make precision missiles in those neighborhoods, allegations that could have been made precisely through surveillance drones.

The Hebrew State has long since swept the airspace of its neighbor to siphon information. As early as 1982, during its intervention in the midst of the Lebanon war, Israel had a science-fiction technology for many ground combatants: a spy drone.

In the 1970s, after the Yom Kippur War, Israel began dropping on surveillance drones.

At the time of the "First Lebanon War, in 1982, the system was operational, it was a real-time intelligence system (...) by camera", explains to AFP the French-Israeli David Harari, who was flying this project to Israeli Aerospace Industries and is considered the "father of the Israeli drone".

Gradually, these drones have integrated infrared cameras, "designators" lasers to identify specific targets, and then "electromagnetic intelligence" systems with microphones and radars, he summarizes.

"Soldiers had been ordered to use this but they expressed a little derision: + what are we going to do with a small plane like that," he recalls.

After 1982, things changed. "Israel was the first country to create a national program to introduce such a system into military doctrine," said Harari.

- Drone "nation" -

The drone gradually became the heart of the device of the army and the "start-up nation" Israeli.

Today, about fifty local "start-ups" are working on prototypes of drones, according to the Ministry of the Economy, which figures in billions the fallout for the country.

From 2005 to 2013, Israel was the world's largest exporter of drones, according to a study by a specialized firm.

But the industry is moving fast with miniaturization, the commercialization of low-cost entertainment devices, and the rise of new players like China, Russia, and Iran, in a sector that has recently been almost monopolized by Israel and the United States. United States.

"Today everyone is in this business," notes Uzi Rubin, former defense missile system tenor at the Ministry of Defense and today an analyst at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS).

Now armed groups can set explosive charges on drones to attack strategic installations or military bases.

"It is a threat to all armies and that's why everyone is looking for solutions and these solutions are to destroy or intercept these devices," Rubin told AFP.

- Antidrone -

Israeli companies like Skylock and Elbit are developing technologies to take remote control of drones without damaging them to recover their data.

In October 2012, an Iranian surveillance drone sent by Hezbollah flew over the Mediterranean to fly 30 minutes over the Negev desert, where the Israeli nuclear installations are located, before being shot down.

And last year, Israel accused Iran of flying one of its drones in its airspace.

The rise of drones in Iran has allowed its Lebanese ally Hezbollah to acquire new intelligence capabilities and attacks, recently noted Israeli researcher Liran Antebi.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 was the "first in history" when the number of flying hours of unmanned aircraft was "higher" than that of pilot aircraft, according to a study by Tel University. -Aviv. But at the time, drones were essentially Israeli.

Today, Israel's technological superiority remains, but "Hezbollah is becoming more and more a military organization equipped with state-of-the-art systems including military and commercial drones," Ms. Antebi writes.

To its fleet of drones, Hezbollah may be adding anti-drone systems. "Whenever Israeli drones enter Lebanon's airspace, we will try to shoot them down," said his leader Hassan Nasrallah this week.

© 2019 AFP