Israeli Defence Minister Bezalel Smotrich has cancelled a new military purchase, after losing dozens of drones worth millions of dollars in the Iranian airspace.
The $16.2 billion contract, according to Israeli news agency Ynet, was supposed to replenish Israel's drone stockpile after the 12-day war with Iran, and prepare the IDF for any further escalation.
According to reports, dozens of Israeli drones disappeared soon after they entered Iranian airspace. Tehran reportedly recovered the unmanned aerial vehicles with minimal damage.
Military experts suggest the drones were downed by Iranian cyber-forces. Notably, Iran was the first nation to claim they downed military drones during combat using cyber warfare.
In 2011, Iran hijacked America’s most advanced stealth drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, through GPS spoofing and forced it to land at a military base in Iran, with minimal damage.
Iran then reverse-engineered its own drone, the Shahed-171, based on the RQ-170 Sentinel technology.
What is GPS spoofing?
GPS spoofing is a cyber technique in which fake GPS signals are sent to the hostile UAV’s receiver, giving it incorrect information about its location and time.
Spoofing is more cost effective than jamming as it requires less power than jamming signals. It can cover a wider range by dispersing radiation at desired frequencies.
The biggest advantage of spoofing is that the targeted equipment or platform does not detect external interference.
For instance, a platform following GPS guidance and commands to follow a particular path, will never know that the GPS signal has been corrupted by an adversary by interfering with merely one of the signals in the satellite constellation. This enables the system to be deceived, causing it to believe it is still on the correct track when, in fact, it is deviating from the intended path.
GPS spoofing involves feeding fake maps and fake coordinates to a device, convincing it to follow incorrect directions.
During the recent 12-day war with Israel, Iran’s cyberwarfare downed three Hermes 900, a heavy-haul, long-range IAI Eitan, two IAI Heron, and two unknown UAVs—one of which is reported to be a newer model of Israel’s Orbiter.
Israeli officials admitted to losing drones worth billions. Many military experts suggest that Iran might develop its own versions of the captured Israeli drones by reverse-engineering the technology.
However, Israel earlier claimed there is no chance of data and technological leaks from the captured drones.
Iranian officials haven’t commented on how they targeted the Israeli drones, but speculation suggests that Iran has made heavy investments to master cyber warfare, that helped them hijack the Israeli UAV’s.
Notably, since the Russia-Ukraine war, drones have changed the nature of warfare. Small drones laden with explosives have inflicted heavy casualties on the battlefield.
A classical example of drone warfare was Ukraine's recent Spider Web operation. Kyiv targeted Russian airbases with drones smuggled into the territory, hitting Moscow's high-cost bombers with precision.
Iran’s success against the US drone demonstrated that spoofing could neutralise high-value military assets such as drones, GPS-guided missiles, and artillery systems.
The incident shifted global attention to electronic warfare, prompting militaries all over the world to recalibrate security for GPS-guided drones, missiles, and ships.
But, despite improved cyber security, Iran was able to hijack Israeli drones.
Though Iran is yet to comment on how they seized the Israeli drones, military experts suggest that Tehran has achieved high-level digital warfare capabilities that can infiltrate any high-tech military and civilian targets.
Does Smotrich cancelling drone contracts signal that Israel is re-evaluating its UAV technology to beat Iran at cyber warfare?
