Unmanned drone (illustration)
Unmanned drone (illustration)Reuters

Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, successfully used an attack drone in a strike that killed tens of Al Nusra Front members near Arsal, Syria, according to Iran's Fars news agency.

The agency said the armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was used in a combined air and ground strike on the Lebanon-Syria border. Beside the drones, Hezbollah employed artillery and light arms against the Syrian rebel forces.

An Iranian source said that Hezbollah had recently begun to use attack drones, which were apparently made in Iran. 

The Air Force conducted a rehearsal earlier this year for an event in which an enemy UAV infiltrates Israeli airspace.

Both jet fighter and combat helicopter squadrons took part in the rehearsal, and practiced interception of a UAV near Israel's border, reported the Air Force Website.

The IAF sees the threat as a growing one and the air crews rehearsed situations in which the most sophisticated UAVs in existence attempt to infiltrate – including models that Israel has never encountered.

On April 25, 2013, a UAV penetrated Israeli air space from Lebanon, and was shot down. IAF aircraft belonging to the aerial defense array identified an aircraft making its way from Lebanon into Israeli airspace, and fighter jets and combat helicopters were scrambled. The UAV was still over the Mediterranean sea when the IAF Commander gave instructions to shoot it down.

Hezbollah denied it had sent that drone towards Israel.

In October of 2012, Hezbollah succeeded in sending a UAV that penetrated Israeli airspace before it was shot down. The embedded video below is from that event.