As prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion came to the conclusion that the Jewish state must maintain a “qualitative military edge” (QME) over its neighbors. The U.S. adopted this idea as policy in 1968, and Congress effectively made it the law in 2008 by passing a bill known as H.R. 7177. The Iran deal, by putting the Islamic Republic on the path to developing nuclear weapons, turns the idea on its head, as Aaron Menenberg writes:

H.R. 7177 . . . states that Israel must have “the ability to counter and defeat any credible military threat from any individual or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors.” That means that, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, Israel must be able to counter and defeat a nuclear attack from Iran. At the same time, it must be able to counter and defeat simultaneous missile attacks from Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not to mention any ground attacks emanating from Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. In addition, Israel must be able to sustain “minimal damages and casualties.” . . . It does not take a military expert to understand just how difficult—perhaps impossible—this objective is to achieve against a nuclear-armed Iran.

This is because, on a fundamental level, an Iranian nuclear weapon hollows out the purpose of Israel’s QME, which is to [compensate for] Israel’s lack of strategic depth. In a conventional war, Israel has a strong enough military and defense system in place to keep an enemy from getting inside Israel’s territory and exploiting that lack of depth. An Iranian nuclear weapon, however, overcomes Israel’s QME by placing all of Israel’s territory under existential threat. The QME is supposed to render Israel’s lack of territorial depth irrelevant, but Iran’s nuclear weapons program makes it relevant again by creating the ability instantly to target Israel’s entire population with—given its dense concentration within a compact territory—quite devastating results.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.