1. Kings of the Sky: The Story of Hezbollah’s Air Force

Comment by Amarynth:  Fascinating and heart-shakingly impressive! is all that can be said.  I will post seven articles from Hezbollah, over seven days.

The articles are titled:
1. Kings of the Sky! – The Story of the Air Force of Hezbollah –
2. 30 Years… From Gliders to Drones, And From Syria to “Karish” to Al-Aqsa Flood
3. The enemy is haunted by the “Karar” drone: Hezbollah’s technical superiority has amazed our army and terrified us.
4. Intelligence and Military Confrontation and High-Tech Systems:
What Are The Details of the Electronic Warfare Between the Resistance and the Enemy?
5. Cost of Drones vs. Cost of Countering Them
6. The Hezbollah Drone Family
7. How did Hezbollah’s needle deflate the legendary balloon?

It is so that Hezbollah is doing these talks about its weapons and drone program to avoid a wider war.  They make it very clear that they hold escalation dominance and they have used only a smidgeon of their ability up to now.  I am also reminded strongly of the Houthis, who, without a navy, stopped shipping in the Red Sea simply because they are on the Palestinian side.

This is the story of Hezbollah, who, without an airforce has escalation dominance in the air and where their technology as they conceived and built it, terrified even themselves.

These are appropriate technologies for their region, obtained by brains, persistence, and overcoming impossible odds.  Not intending to lob missiles over the oceans, they want to protect themselves and to wack the occupier zionists which they will do if it comes to that.

Then one thinks of the North Koreans and the sheer pride when they make a missile fly.  It is a similar context.  They want to be able to protect themselves against the Hegemon and build their missiles with brains, persistence, and against incredible odds.

The limited bolding is mine, but I have to call attention to this sentence:  a political and ethical decision stands behind the way Hezbollah’s drones currently operate. They have never been launched towards random targets, have never hit a civilian center, nor have they set a forest on fire.  What a stark difference between these ethics and ‘the so-called most moral army in the world’.  They go on to say that should the war escalate, it will not remain with those ethics.

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Today, Al-Akhbar released a series of seven articles about the evolution of Hezbollah’s drone capabilities, accompanied by a video that includes an interview with a commander in Hezbollah’s Air Force.

Following the seven articles, there is a sub-titled video, released by Al-Akhbar.
In an interview with Al-Akhbar, a commander in the Islamic Resistance Air Force (to the extent permitted) provided a summary of the history of the Air Force’s inception. He discussed the stages of its development in Lebanon, particularly through collaboration with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, especially after transitioning to the realm of drones.

The jihadi commander explains details related to the drone weaponry as a part of the Air Force within the resistance. He offers insights into the ongoing battle for the resistance to acquire its needs and the enemy’s efforts to prevent these capabilities from reaching Hezbollah, including military operations such as the assassination of the unit’s commander, Martyr Hassan al-Lakkis, in 2013.

The commander also details the enemy’s systems for detecting, tracking, and monitoring drones, the mechanisms and methods employed by the enemy, and provides explanations about the types of drones available to the resistance, revealing some while the resistance retains many surprises in this domain.

1. Kings of the Sky! – The Story of the Air Force of Hezbollah

A plethora of information has been published or circulated in narrow circles about Hezbollah’s air power.
This no longer occupies the enemy’s mind. All the information gathered over the past 15 years on this
subject was tested in recent months, revealing that what troubles the enemy’s leaders—both political
and military—is their realization of something previously unacknowledged and denied: It seems that
Hezbollah possesses capabilities unknown to the “god of intelligence.”

The “god of intelligence,” who has “conditioned the consciousness” of forces, groups, and governments
for decades and “thwarted their dreams,” faced its greatest setback on October 7th, followed by
continuous setbacks in Gaza and in the supporting fronts, from Lebanon to Iraq and Yemen.
In Lebanon, the enemy’s leaders found themselves confronted with a reality that contradicted all
previous assessments. What has emerged so far regarding Hezbollah’s capabilities in the realm of
“flying objects” was never on the discussion table in “Tel Aviv”, and it appears these capabilities were
not even within their expectations.

Despite the previous claims that “israel” had detailed knowledge of Iran’s efforts in the field of drones
and acted on the assumption that Hezbollah had versions of these, the enemy was shocked to discover
that superior intelligence gathering, analysis, and assessment is not exclusive to “israel”’s “god of
intelligence.” How much more so when it becomes clear that the technology in Hezbollah’s possession
is not of the kind that groups on the fringes of major powers obtain but is fully possessed by Hezbollah
with significant investment in it, compelling the enemy to deal with Hezbollah on an equal footing.
Many are unaware of what the enemy has done over the past twenty years in confronting the
“accumulation of capabilities” by the resistance in Lebanon.

The public, both in “israel” and Lebanon, has not been privy to the unprecedented efforts in intelligence activities by the occupation army and all its security and military apparatuses. Few know about the security, and even military, operations and the daring of “israeli” commando teams, all part of a long-term plan to prevent Hezbollah from acquiring the necessary capabilities and from reaching the stage of activating them.The bitter truth is that the enemy’s estimates were in one place, while Hezbollah and its capabilities stood in an entirely different place. This place was not just outside “israeli” calculations, but also outside their intelligence estimates, perceptions, and hypotheses.

The shock to “israeli” intelligence was so great that, for a period, it led to a denial of reality and a search
for alternative explanations until the moment of truth, which awakened the collective consciousness of
the entity’s inhabitants, with the Haifa incident. This incident and such capabilities were at the lowest
rung of “israeli” estimates.

The damage did not stop there. The intelligence blindness regarding the resistance’s aerial capabilities
revealed another level of concern among enemy leaders. The efforts made in the past two decades
focused on finding remedies for what was assumed to be the maximum Hezbollah could achieve. Now,
“Tel Aviv” has awakened to discover that what it does not know, or what it did not imagine existed, is not
just a margin of error that can be contained but unknown capabilities that cannot be detected until they
are used. Among these are capabilities for which there are no present remedies. The fear grows due to
what the enemy now considers the potential impact of these capabilities on the course and outcomes of
any war: unknown types of drones and unknown types of air defense.

Last May, the National Security Research Center in “Tel Aviv” recommended to the army leadership to
“prepare now to find solutions and responses to future threats such as drones guided by systems based
on artificial intelligence, which relies on images and scenes they receive in real-time while in the air, to
overcome the jamming of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other types of electronic warfare.”

Drones:  Once again, the nature of arrogance prevailed in the minds of the enemy’s leaders, denying the
resistance the ability to operate in this new world. This arrogance leaves the enemy far from answering
the obvious question: How can Hezbollah’s drones find their way and succeed in striking their targets
amid the most extensive electronic, technological, and security clampdown activated on the front?
The resistance, which has never stopped working to establish a qualitative presence in this world, has
found its way to the sky as well. The enemy has long boasted of being the “god of the sky” or the “king
of the sky.” However, what the air force of the Islamic resistance has done has enabled its members,
intellects, cadres, and leaders to also become “kings of the sky.”

What has been presented in recent months is merely a small sample of what can be provided in the event of a broader confrontation. The resistance is bound by significant restrictions, allowed to use only a small portion of its energy, ideas, plans, and capabilities, which are the result of decades of effort and paid for with sweat, blood, and tears.

Perhaps the enemy’s public does not know that a political and ethical decision stands behind the way
Hezbollah’s drones currently operate. They have never been launched towards random targets, have
never hit a civilian center, nor have they set a forest on fire. However, in the event of a full-scale war, the
picture will be entirely different, especially in response to the brutality characteristic of the enemy’s
behavior. This was the case during the 2006 war when, at the last moment, an enemy warplane
managed to shoot down a drone on its way to ammonia tanks. Had it reached its target, “israel” would
have understood the true meaning of catastrophe, something it continually inflicts on Palestine and
Lebanon.

More importantly, and most sensitively, the enemy is incapable of finding a solution to the operations of
the resistance that have so far destroyed a very large number of detection systems and can, at a certain
moment, disable air defense systems. This moment would pave the way for types of precise and heavy
missiles that know their way to entire neighborhoods in “Tel Aviv” and all the cities of the entity.
In the event of a comprehensive war, the enemy should be prepared for a type of operation
unprecedented in its history.

Those in the leadership of the resistance assert that the enemy will face a special event, where drones will occupy the skies of the “triangle of death,” which links the “Kiryat Shmona” bases in the northeast, the “Palmachim” base in the central west, and the “Asaf Ramon” Airport in the south, where the enemy’s air force is concentrated.

In this file, Al-Akhbar presents a chapter from the story of the air force in the Islamic Resistance as
narrated by a commander in this force. The file exclusively addresses the world of drones in the “air
force.” The story has its continuation, as the pioneering experience in the air defense system, alongside
the missile force, should deter the enemy from continuing its search, as it now knows that these
capabilities exist wherever it goes and wherever it turns!