On July 13 and 14, over 200 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from Gaza, one of which hit a playground and another a synagogue. One reason why more projectiles failed to hit their targets is the Iron Dome missile-defense system, which shoots incoming ordinance out of the sky. In 2006, after Hizballah launched thousands of rockets into Israel during the Second Lebanon War, the Israeli firm Rafael tasked an engineer named Chanoch Levin, whose own town was bombarded that year, with building a system to protect against them. Dan Raviv tells the story of Levin and his collaborators:

A couple, Boris and Polina (not their real names), both thirty-four, were at the center of Levin’s innermost team. Both had immigrated to Israel with their parents when they were teenagers—she from Soviet Moldova and he from St. Petersburg. In Israel, they grew up to become masters of algorithms. It was their role to come up with an entirely new way for the interceptor missile’s tiny computer to calculate when it was close enough to the attacking rocket to explode its warhead and destroy both projectiles. This had to occur in mere microseconds, since two fast-flying objects meeting nearly head-to-head would have only the briefest of encounters. Polina was a brilliant computer programmer, but testing her algorithms required trial-and-error repetitions on test platforms that had never been used before. Boris’s job was to combine his wife’s mathematical solutions with a unitary, working system that could communicate with software written by dozens of people. He referred to his challenge as a Tower of Babel.

The senior team also included a non-Jew. At twenty-nine, Mula was young for a major in the IDF. Always in uniform, he was assigned to Rafael while he studied for his doctorate in mechanical engineering. A member of the Druze community of northern Israel, Mula invited his teammates to all the big celebrations in his village, where they were warmly welcomed and treated to huge meals. Mula’s assignment was to make sure, during the testing phase of the project, that IDF soldiers would be in place and ready to fire the exact same rockets that Hamas and Hizballah would be using. . . .

To save time, humans were also written out of the equation. With the short-range Katyusha rockets and mortar attacks from Gaza, there would be less than fifteen seconds to decide whether Iron Dome should fire an interceptor, a choice that would be made entirely by an automated system. Although five soldiers would sit in a battle management center, a portable trailer near the launchers, monitoring what their Iron Dome was doing, there would be no time for humans to push a “Fire!” button.

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.