How Hizballah drones hunt Israeli tanks, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to Electronic Intifada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report on day 930 of Israel's genocide in Gaza, day 55 of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and day 52 of Hezbollah's defense of South Lebanon. I am reporting this on the afternoon of Thursday, April 23rd, 7 days after the 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon went into effect. Um on the left on the Iran front, Trump has extended unilaterally, uh the ceasefire that 15-day ceasefire that expires is to expire today. Um he said that he will continue focusing on the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. For on that score, there have been multiple boardings of ships by the US and also by the IRGC Navy. Um so there's a bit of a standoff in the Strait of Hormuz with what is a porous blockade. Ships are making it through the blockade um and have been over the last number of days, but the US um and Iranians are picking off ships uh during that blockade. Uh so that standoff continues. For their part, the IRGC said that they are capable and powerful and uh are at 100% readiness with their fingers on the trigger and have been ready for a resumption of the war. But this week, we're going to focus on Lebanon. Um everything that you are going to see on this program, as always, was released in the past week since you last saw me. And with Hezbollah operations, we're getting them about uh a week or 10 days um late after the operation took place based on operational security, the distance traveled in the area, and we have been following that throughout the war. So let's take a look at the maps. Uh we'll start off with this. This is the key area of the battle space for uh the past 40 plus days. Israel said that they were going to take up to the Litani River. They have not done that at all. They are within a couple of kilometers of the border. They bragged this week that they had destroyed in 5,500 targets hit, 4,600 airstrikes, and almost 15,000 artillery strikes that they had dropped 165 multi-story family buildings. Israel killed 200 uh 2,294 Lebanese, 7,544 have been wounded. And the killing has continued since the ceasefire has went into effect, as is always the case with Israel. Um Israel is trying to achieve through negotiations at this point what they have failed to achieve on the battlefield. They want the Lebanese armed forces to fight a civil war in Lebanon against Hezbollah because Israel has been unable to defeat them despite telling us that they were defeated last year. Clearly not the case. We've seen Hezbollah come back in this battle with an operational tempo that has been unprecedented in the history of the organization. Just during the ceasefire alone, the National Council for Scientific Research in Lebanon documented 220 Israeli ceasefire violations just in the first 3 days alone, including artillery shelling, mining, and explosive operations. Again, they're trying to destroy houses. That is the principal aim of this operation. They Israelis have been very clear about it. They want to turn the villages in South Lebanon that you see along the border there, Naqoura, Bint Jbeil, Khiam. They want to turn those into uh Beit Hanoun and Rafah the Gaza model. Um and Hezbollah has not been patient this time. Uh during the previous ceasefire, Hezbollah held their fire. This time they are not. They are responding to operations uh that the Israelis uh carry out including Hezbollah four operations yesterday that targeted uh a number of drones, a number of tanks um in the area uh where Israeli forces attempted to move forward uh from the ceasefire line. They were targeted. Of course, Israel has carried out uh a number of attacks during this period as well. If we look at the next map, you can see the way that the Israelis uh structured this operation. Those five points that you see there along the border um at the bottom, that's Israel. And what you're seeing is five forward bases that Israel built during the last ceasefire inside Lebanon. And they used those bases as forward bases um for this operation. So, they were already inside Lebanon, which means that 40 plus days, 7 weeks of fighting. Um in many cases, the Israelis only made it hundreds of meters from where they already were. Um the goal, according to the Israelis, we won't get into it too much right now because uh we'll see if they're able to accomplish that. But their goal is to create another yellow line like in Gaza in South Lebanon throughout the villages. There's currently 55 villages that the Israeli military said people are unable to return, are not allowed to return home to. And then we've heard ministers in Israel talking about how uh like we heard with Gaza, that the goal is to destroy all of the houses so people do not have anywhere to return to. And the way that Israel has been fighting this battle are They spoke with uh army Commander spoke with Army Radio about their doctrine and the number four point in their doctrine was that the directive to Israeli forces was wherever you identify a threat engage but take no risks. So essentially a doctrine of fear has been what has animated Israel's war in South Lebanon. Six divisions are involved in this including reserve divisions. This is more It's the same number of divisions that operated in Gaza at the beginning of the Gaza war but as I said last week we know that the reserve recall of reserve soldiers did not return every soldier that was supposed to return like they did in Gaza. So they had a full complement of forces in Gaza but not in Lebanon from all that we know. Let's take a look at the map because you'll see this next map of Hezbollah engagements. This is where this is direct confrontation with Israeli forces and you can see how this matches up with the previous map where based on the five forward bases. You can see it along the coast in Naqoura along the western coast and then you can see Bint Jbeil in the central sector there at the bottom of the map on the right and then going up into the Galilee panhandle over the Hula Valley is the other main element. So they had two divisions at each of those spots pushing forward attempting to redraw the border line is what Israel's trying to do here to create a buffer zone. That is their intention. We'll follow that as it goes. Um Let's take a look at the next map because again it'll show you where their tanks were hit. 188 anti-tank operations during this stage of the war. You can see those also match pretty much with the um direct confrontation maps. Um, but you can see there's a lot more anti-tank operations than direct confrontations because the Israelis didn't have any interest in direct confrontations and we'll we'll see that as we watch these videos from this week. They show um, they show that pretty starkly. So, 188 anti-tank operations as shown on that map there. Um, let's go to the first operation. This is an anti-tank guided missile strike. It's a pair of guided missile strikes in Kantara uh, area in the central sector. Um, in the south-central sector. You can see there uh, an Israeli Merkava tank crossing in behind that house. We have footage here from from a distance. Uh, looks like from the neighboring hilltop. But, you can see the tanks moving through um, the town of uh, Al-Kantara. And on the edge when it passes back through this uh, house on the far edge of the screen that you're looking at, you're going to see it get hit by a Cornet anti-tank guided missile strike. Something that we saw um, all through particularly the first stage of this war. Um, [snorts] in after October 7th. Um, there you can see the a zoom in on it again of the hit direct strike. You can tell by the smoke uh, the color of the smoke. It's different than the smoke screen smoke. Which is a a whiter color when they um, they use their exhaust to create a smoke screen. Now, we're going to see in between here that targeted tank was obviously at least damaged, likely destroyed and is going to be towed uh, by another tank that you're going to see in between those houses, in between the circle there. You're going to see the first tank uh, coming through and behind it is the towed disabled tank that has been uh mission killed at least uh by that uh anti-tank operation, which was one of two. There's going to be a second anti-tank operation and indeed a third one in the same location at the same time. This gives you a another shot of the towing uh of the disabled tank here. You know, you get a lot of comments and I got a lot of people in the comments uh saying, "Did these tanks get hurt?" we we see them clearly that way on top of hundreds of Israeli casualties from inside tanks uh throughout the battle. Here you're going to see the second tank be targeted. And a third tank is targeted uh moments later, although it is not caught on camera for that one. And then we have in this next slide a zoom in that uh Tamara has done to make it a little bit more clear what we're looking at. There's the first strike. You can see that pretty clearly and pretty obviously, pretty significant damage to the tank immediately. And in through that circle, you'll see the tank driving in right now to pick up the destroyed tank. They'll hook it up and tow it out as we saw in Gaza many, many times. Often they use uh D9 armored bulldozers in Gaza, but they are traveling differently. There's the first tank pulling. You can see the chain that it's got and there's second tank that was destroyed being pulled. In Gaza, we saw them be pulled with multiple D9 bulldozers often. We saw them lots pulled with tanks. Um but the D9s don't work with the tanks in the same way in Lebanon as they did in Gaza. They worked in um in units in Gaza together. There you see the tank being pulled uh through the neighborhood there in Al Qantara. One of three tanks destroyed during that operation. That operation was on March 28th. So in some cases we're getting these 2 weeks after. Um let's look at the next slide. Um this is a stitch that I put together of three FPV drone operations first-person view. Uh that's what FPV is. It means that you can have a video screen driver. Um and you can see the driver sees through this um and also makes a video of it so you can see um the exact route that the pilot took. And these video these videos, of course, were uh made popular in the battle in the Ukraine. >> [snorts] >> Uh in Ukraine. Uh and this you can pretty clearly see that that is a school that is being used. Again, all of the um all of the Israeli tactics from Gaza are being used in Lebanon. They're using schools. They're destroying hospitals. They're targeting paramedics. Killing children. Uh all of those uh are consistent doctrinal uh aspects of the Israeli military fighting these wars. As is the one that I read earlier where they don't want engagements. They want uh they want to call in air strikes as soon as they get engagements and withdraw. They don't want to stand and fight in South Lebanon. You can see the the tank there spotted. You can see the view of the camera on these drones circle in and immediately target that Namer troop carrier there. And there's one more here. >> Um and you can see the difference and the reason why these drones are useful in this terrain um where the there's a large distance to cover, where Israel's able to have the high ground in some places. Here's another one on a um on another Namer troop carrier there. Side by side. And we've seen as these have developed, um this is from the uh Nahal Brigade commander Colonel Eric Moel. He said that before the ceasefire, we wouldn't dare to stick our heads out because Hezbollah sends explosive drones and you can get hit by anti-tank missiles from long ranges. Um he said that um that Hezbollah the way that Hezbollah fight, they sent hundreds of militants to South Lebanon to fight in the first days um the with effective weapons, with explosive drones and anti-tank missiles dozens a day. The commander of the Nahal Brigade who's fighting on the western sector um said to uh Army Radio. Let's look at number seven cuz we have a drone dropping ammunition. This is something we saw being used in Gaza to um strong effect as well. You can see it's got anti-personnel ball bearings on the uh bottom of the RPG anti-tank warhead. Underneath you're seeing an artillery position um linked to the 145th 46th Division. Um the 212th Fire Brigade, 213th Fire Brigade. And you can see the uh Israeli soldiers there on the ground as the ammunition hits the ground after being dropped. So now we're seeing the capability by Hezbollah to drop the drone uh to drop the uh anti-tank missile instead of driving the drone as a suicide drone. Again, adaptations on the battlefield that are happening in real time here with Hezbollah. And finding these artillery positions is also part of their significance intelligence along this. In the next few videos, you're going to see that. And Hezbollah has built these drones in a very smart way. They've used component parts that are very resilient to a supply chain. They're not all pre-fixed. They are building these These are Hezbollah built drones. They're clean, they're smart, they're cheap, they're easy to assemble, they have resilience in the products cuz you can mix and match the component parts, undetectable in the supply chain, so you can't crack down on it. And they've chosen wisely at each one of these options. I showed you this back a couple episodes ago when I really broke down the Hezbollah builds on these, but just to reiterate, they're using common application common applying common parts that are used in appliances in common appliances that you would never be able to detect that they are being bought in numbers. And the total builds of these drones for each of these component parts, the propeller, the carbon fiber frame, brushless motor, customized battery array, the flight controller, the camera and transmitter and antenna, all of that, all put together, you're looking at like a $200 build for these drones. So, this has been a really remarkable development that has happened in this battle. We saw a couple of times, a handful of times, drones be quadcopter drones be used during the first battles after October 7th, but only a few times, a handful of times. This time they're being used across sectors and they're being used very effectively. Let's take a look at this next one, number eight we're on now. Um this is another quadcopter. You can see the the quadcopter um propellers in the front there. Um that gives you an indication. It's good I've been calling them quadcopters to be specific because Hezbollah, of course, also has drones. We've seen that. Here we see a Namer troop carrier. And another development of the tactical approach hitting the rear of the vehicle, the weakest spot. We haven't seen Hezbollah's targeting documents, but we know from Qassam targeting documents that the rear door is the target. And in those two storage containers that you're looking at there are are munition storage. So hitting those um is a prime target. So really just uh at tactical battlefield awareness, just the increase. You can see in this flight he circles back. Rather than diving down immediately on the target when it's a identified. we're seeing the pilots now circle back and hit the spot on the vehicle that is the most um that is the weakest, the most susceptible to the single RPG warhead that is being uh fired. And so in this case, it's an armored troop carrier, so you have people um you can have as many as a dozen people uh hold up in that tank. >> Um let's look at number nine. This is in uh around Bint Jbeil. Of course, there was a lot of fighting around Bint Jbeil in the last couple of weeks. We're going to see that fighting in the coming weeks because, as I've said, we have about a two-week, 10-day uh lag between the operations and the videos. This is a good example here of him circling back. So you they've they've spotted the target there, the Namer troop carrier. They fly overtop of it, circle back around, get stable with the cuz they're carrying underneath they're carrying the anti-tank warhead underneath. So, they're aiming at balancing it, coming in low to it, and again, striking the rear door on a troop carrier where the cabin is full of soldiers. So, instead of dive-bombing immediately, we're seeing these developments, and this is happening like exponentially day over day during this battle. Um number nine, we're going to see them target uh even more specifically here. This is in Al Bayada on the western coast, just north of Naqoura. You can see the Mediterranean Sea in the background there as they come across. Um and you can see the way that this tank is tucked into the building so that people can exit right into the building without being exposed. And that is a direct hit on the commander's hatch. Um and on the commander's hatch is the battlefield management system. That's going to be targeted. You're going to see at the end of this video the two places that it's about to be hit. This will blind the commanders there. You can see those two uh and then that is the turret. Um that is the turret hatch for the commander. It is the weakest spot uh on the top of the tank. And so, uh another smart hit. And you can see the way it matches with what the Nahal Brigade commander said that they um they don't stick their head ups. They don't stick their head up because Hezbollah is hitting from a distance. Um these operations, these anti-tank operations and anti-personnel operations using anti-tank guided missiles and using these drones. And many of these drones we've seen crash drones that show these dream these drones are running fiber optic cable, um which prevents them from uh electronic warfare scrambling. So, um another development that we're seeing. They're running a spool. Um um they're running a spool that can be 3D printed. So again, something that is resilient that can be done in-house um without having a supply chain that could be shut down. So again, this is this is just a very sophisticated way to hit this tank, very uh well-protected tank. Um people see the tanks in Russia go up in flames, but these uh Merkava tanks are a lot stronger armor. And so you have to pick your spot, uh particularly with the 80-mm anti-tank warhead, cuz it's not as strong as the say the tandem Yasin 105. So let's look look at let's take a look at number 10 here. Um because they're also targeting um electronic warfare stations. This is a newly established position here um in up at the top of the Galilee panhandle inside Lebanon. They established another one of these positions. And intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance by Hezbollah is able to pick up these new installations. And again, we're seeing not dive bombing immediately, but setting up the uh warhead here, putting the drone in the right position to hit. And then once in the base, as you're going to see here, they're going to penetrate the base on the top of this mountain. And inside the base, they're not just hitting anything. They're hitting the nerve center right there, the electronic warfare nerve center. Um to knock that out, and that is what Israel uses for its battle space management. So these types of things are critical to the Israeli battle. They put up these new positions, and these new positions allow them to then uh reach further into Lebanese territory. And so targeting these is a major setback, multi-million dollar losses. Um but also direct battlefield impact because of the way that these systems are used in Israel's overall network connectivity for their troops. Number 11, that you're going to see them hit an Elbit system here. This is a a technical high mobility shelter. Essentially, it's like a base on wheels. You're going to see it on the back of a of a US HEMTT here, and it's a direct hit again on that multi-million dollar loss. This is a mobile command and control communication system. So, again, a significant loss. A new position. Israel moves it into the new position and Hezbollah is immediately on it and destroying it. And not just hitting it randomly, but hitting the exact high high value target inside that position. You can clearly see direct hit on that. And with an anti-tank warhead onto that, that shreds that vehicle. That vehicle has no chance against an anti-tank warhead, a high explosive anti-tank warhead. So, we're seeing high value targeting quality operations with these quadcopters. We're seeing these quadcopters released virtually every day. They're part of more than 300 drone operations throughout this war, and dozens of them have been part of the 188 anti-tank that we've seen as well. And you can see, again, the camera is right dead center on the target, and so that's a hit. We can see that in this next slide here as the you can see the HEMTT, and you can see the the Elbit system. So, it's another Elbit system that is being destroyed. Now, let's take a look at the rocket operations that Hezbollah has been executing. This is the map of those operations, essentially covering all of the border area, but also some deep into into Israel. The split is about 50/50 between operations. There was 1,127 operations inside Israel and 1,100 inside Lebanon. So, split basically right down the middle. The rocket operations the IDF said that there was 8,000 rockets fired at them. Hezbollah said that there was 1,400 rocket operations, and that's just the number of individual operations. So, you can see where those match up. The targets are troops behind Israeli troops that are in the rear that are mustering to go into Lebanon. They're being hit constantly, and we can hear Israeli chatter about that all the time. We know that a number of their casualties were grouped soldiers being hit by artillery and rocket fire. A number of the fatalities as well that the Israelis have been kind of keeping under wraps, it seems again were from that kind of rocket fire. And in that map that you're looking at there, in the bottom right corner is the zoom in on each of the positions along the border that I showed you in that previous map. So, logical rocket operations that are happening across all sectors, across all types of rocket munitions. So, everybody is involved in this battle, and that's why you're seeing the tempo of operations be higher than anything that we have ever seen before from Hezbollah. And Naim Qassem, the secretary general, said they said this is an existential war. We've seen the fighters say that it's an existential war while they're on the front lines fighting, and that is how Hezbollah has treated this operation. They're also treating this ceasefire as whatever Israel does, they respond to. They're not being patient with this ceasefire like they were with the last one. And Hezbollah's been able to carry out 2,200 operations averaging about 50 a day with peak of 98 and many days over 90 during this So, let's take a look at a Hezbollah field gun operation cuz these were remarkable. I showed you these a couple shows ago, but these are effectively These are World War II field guns that we're seeing in effect. You know, maybe they're built a little bit after World War II, but they are from that vintage of weapon. And we see them here with a buried launching site. Um so, they've got an underground artillery placement here for a towed field gun, 130-mm millimeter towed field gun. You can see the size of the shell that's being loaded. You can see how many guys it takes to operate this. We're looking at a picture of Nasrallah on the side, as always. Um and we're seeing this long shot, like a single shot that we get to really see what goes on in these operations. I talked about that last week. Um that they're giving the fighters cameras that didn't previously have cameras. Um rather than having formal military media um operatives with the cameras, like we saw in Gaza, we're seeing a lot more of um cameras being given to the fighters here. And you can see in this underground launch site, very difficult to track for counter-battery fire because they're underground. And we saw earlier the barrel raise up from the underground as well. So, across all sectors, across all capabilities, this is one of 184 artillery operations, and it gives you an idea of what the other 183 looked like, how many guys it takes to operate these. And I mean, a field gun like this is a very it's a very useful weapon. You can see there from the underground firing position that you can't you can barely see where the launch site is when you're standing beside it. So, it's very useful, and they're using these as troops mustered ready to go into a town. And you fire these field guns from relatively short distances. They're roughly accurate enough, and they're very useful. So, it was really interesting to see these. That that's a 130 mm M46 field gun for those keeping track at home. Let's look at 15 because we got more of these Fadi launchers, and we the whole trip with the fellas in the car on their way. This is something we didn't used to get at all, and now we get at almost every video. They arrive at the site of the launcher. It's a launch truck. It's truck-mounted launcher. You can see we're looking here at no cab because it has previously been hit at least once, maybe multiple times, completely destroyed the cab, but Hezbollah has rebuilt it. And they're showing us that. Now, you can see them driving here with no front windshield, with no roof, with a couple of pictures of Nasrallah and Naim Qassem, and Khamenei. And you can see their quads there that they have made famous in South Lebanon. Driving this truck to the site of the launch. Here they are arriving. Victory signs by the driver, who you can see his entire body cuz there's no windshield, there's no roof uh on this launcher. And these guys, while they're talking, they're making fun of Netanyahu. There's cuz Netanyahu, the day before this operation, had come out and said, "Oh, we have destroyed 80% of their launchers." And so, these guys are laughing back and forth amongst themselves just saying like uh is this does this launcher count as one that Netanyahu hit? Now, they're showing a picture of Nasrallah. There's the fighters all celebrating before they launch. And it's a perfectly effective Fadi launcher. The Fadi is an 80-kg warhead, 70-km um range for the Fadi 1. Not sure if this is a Fadi 1 or a Fadi 2. Um the Fadi 2 is 170 kilos and 100-km range. We can see that in the next two pictures, too. Um you can see the cab the here this is the one with the cab. The two fighters' faces are blurred. One's carrying a flag, one's carrying Nasrallah's picture. Uh and they're arriving to the site in a truck with no front window, no side doors, and no roof. Um the next slide, you can see that same truck set up to launch. And you can see the cab uh barely exists on the front of that. Uh and these are longer-range uh rockets built by Hezbollah. We often see these rockets used to target the interior. Um we see this used against Glilot a lot, which is where the Mossad base and Unit 8200 base is in Tel Aviv. So, they're firing these um on Tel Aviv a lot of times. If this is behind the Litani River, they're using this to fire on military bases in Haifa at the naval port. Um and there's one more photo like this that's that shows the full launch uh glory. It's remarkable operation. One of these days, when the war is over, I'm going to uh break down some of these Fadi videos because they're are really remarkable in the way that the fighters have been able to uh keep them in the battle despite them being targeted numerous times. And of course, just for this last map, I want to just show you what Israel's targets really were and what they always are. This is from the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Since the beginning of the aggression, as I said, 2,294 martyrs, 7,544 wounded, 98 paramedics killed, 356 paramedics wounded, targeting health sector, 116 ambulances destroyed, 25 hospitals destroyed, 25 clinics destroyed, six hospitals destroyed. It's just remarkable remarkable savagery targeting civilians. Of course, last night they also targeted and killed Al Akbar journalist Amal Khalil, and she was pursued and pinned down and ultimately killed by the Israelis. They didn't allow anyone in to to rescue the injured at the time they were injured. She was with her colleague Zainab Farhat, who was severely wounded. The Red Crescent eventually after hours got in to save Zainab, and she was able to be rescued, only return hours later to find Amal's body in the rubble. Amal was previously threatened by messages from the IDF that said that if she didn't leave Lebanon, that she needed to leave Lebanon if she wanted to keep her head attached to her body. So, that's that's Israel for you, targeting children, hospitals, schools, paramedics, and journalists for simply doing their job. And I wanted to bring that, of course, because behind all the military analysis is often just these straight-up attacks on civilians that the Israelis are so famous for. So, this has been the resistance report for day 930 since Qassam's October 7th raid that dismantled the Gaza division in minutes and the subsequent genocide in Gaza. >> [music]