First Step in Surprise Hamas Attack: Destroy Israeli Communications

Hamas drones dropped IEDs on communication tower and were able to surprise Israeli soldiers and massacre civilians

The recent battle between Israel and Hamas, with 1,500 fighters crossing the Gaza border into Israel on Saturday morning, killing soldiers and anything that moved, including children. A thousand people have died on each side at the time of this writing.

A drone drops an improvised explosive device (IED) on a military communication tower. Source: video from Hamas posted on Telegram.

A drone drops an improvised explosive device (IED) on a military communication tower. Source: video from Hamas posted on Telegram.

The attack started with drones taking out Israel’s communications by dropping improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on electrical generators at the base of a military communication tower near the Be’eri kibbutz. Without being able to relay to other military barracks on the border or central command, the troops at the communication tower could not convey the size of the attacking force, and this was a once-in-a-generation attack. They may have thought they were facing a small-scale attack by a single team of fighters, the kind that has been a sad reality in Israel for most of its existence.

 

View from a drone of a remote-control gun system at the Gaza border. Source: Hamas footage released on October 7, 2023, by Qassam Brigades/Telegram.

View from a drone of a remote-control gun system at the Gaza border. Source: Hamas footage released on October 7, 2023, by Qassam Brigades/Telegram.

Another drone dropped an IED on a remote-controlled gun placement that Israel was counting on to guard the gate and reinforce a small number of soldiers. Without the remote-controlled gun, the fighters were able to knock down the gate, overwhelm the few soldiers who were present, and advance into the kibbutz, where they killed a hundred men, women and children and took hostages.

Three more towers were seen smoking hours later and gaps opened in the border fence, allowing a total of 1,500 Hamas invaders to cross into Israel. They overran an army base, which inexplicably housed several commanders, killing and taking hostages. Soldiers were killed in their beds; others were killed in their underwear. The resulting loss of a forward command structure combined with the loss of the communication network that made central command screens blank also prevented a concerted counterattack and the ability of soldiers to request that Tel Aviv scramble air support. Attack planes, based only minutes away, would not arrive for hours, despite social media immediately documenting the attacks.

Israeli security, now under the scope for what is being called a massive failure, had warned of heightened communications by Hamas, a precursor to an operation afoot, but the warning was either unnoticed, ignored or delivered to dead soldiers.

Low Tech Levels the Battlefield

The manner in which communications were destroyed is a classic, time-proven and effective tactic at the start of a battle. That it was done by a military from Palestine, a country not all nations recognize that does not have an air force, navy or heavy weapons or any technology to speak of, is yet another example of how low tech can trump high tech in the modern battlefield. The retreat of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, under threat of a much smaller navy with little more than sea drones, is another example. More examples since World War II of huge militaries humbled by low-tech resistance: Russia in Afghanistan or the United States in Vietnam—both superpowers with tanks and aircraft—were defeated by a determined people with neither.

Israel has controlled the Gaza Strip since its capture from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War. Though Israel has withdrawn its military presence inside the Gaza Strip, the land is completely enclosed, is fenced in on three sides and has a naval blockade in the Mediterranean Sea.

Gates on the fences are essentially military checkpoints. As Hamas was observed to have decreased its activity and was not directly involved with armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into Israel over the last few years, Israel reduced its military presence at the borders, moving troops to areas perceived as more threatening, like the West Bank, and replacing them with unmanned observation posts and remote-controlled guns along the border.

According to Defense News and Jane’s Defence Weekly, Israel began deploying remote-controlled 7.62 mm machine guns, part of the RAFAEL’s Samson Mini line, at a cost of $780 million. The stations use fiber optics to communicate with a control center.

The Remote-Controlled Gun

RAFAEL’s Samson Mini, a remote-controlled weapon station (RCWS) that can be outfitted to fire a 7.62mm round, a .50 cal/12.7mm round with a range of about one mile (1.5 km), as well as precision-guided missiles, such as Spike LR optically guided missiles and Lahat laser-guided weapons. Image: Defense News.

RAFAEL’s Samson Mini, a remote-controlled weapon station (RCWS) that can be outfitted to fire a 7.62mm round, a .50 cal/12.7mm round with a range of about one mile (1.5 km), as well as precision-guided missiles, such as Spike LR optically guided missiles and Lahat laser-guided weapons. Image: Defense News.
Israeli Defense Force (IDF)-operated Sentry Tech tower showing gun and hemispherical protective cover retracted near the Israeli-Gaza border. Stock photo.

Israeli Defense Force (IDF)-operated Sentry Tech tower showing gun and hemispherical protective cover retracted near the Israeli-Gaza border. Stock photo.

“We understood that in Gaza, we’re going to have to compensate for lack of depth and limited freedom of maneuver,” said Gabi Ashkenazi, then the outgoing Israeli Defense Force (IDF) deputy chief of General Staff to Defense News in 2005. “We plan to do this through a technological process that allows us to transform depth, which we’ll lack, into time, which we will create with pictures served up instantaneously through the network.”

The remote-controlled guns were to perform the job of soldiers with guns, keeping fighters away from the border crossings and countering snipers and rocket attacks launched from the Gaza side.

“Nobody has any business approaching our border fence. It’s well-understood that this area is off-limits, and this new technology will make it easier for us to prevent the next kidnapping or terror event,” said a senior Israeli official.

Israel, if not the pioneer in the use of remote-controlled guns, at least has the most famous use case. A special model based on the 7.62mm Belgian FN MAG was fired remotely by a Mossad sniper, killing Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, outside Tehran in November 2021. The sniper was a thousand miles away when shots were fired toward Fakhrizadeh’s moving car, according to the New York Times. The gun, mount, cameras, communication equipment and explosives (to destroy the evidence after the hit)—all told, a ton of gear—were smuggled into Iran and the system was reassembled on-site and mounted onto a pickup truck. The system used AI to compensate for the car’s speed, recoil and vibration.

The Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip. Image: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Gaza Strip. Image: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Gaza Strip is thin strip of land about the size of Manhattan and home to over 2 million people. Unemployment is at 25 percent and up to 80 percent for the youth. In times of stress, such as in the present, the unemployment rate has reached 45 percent. Most of the jobs are in Israel, but since the fences were put up, commuting has become difficult and, with the borders closed, impossible.

What’s with Drones?

The Hamas air force, as it were, consists entirely of drones. They may have made by DGI, the Chinese manufacturer that has captured 80 percent of the consumer market. Although DGI does not make military grade hardware, it has not stopped terrorists, resistance fighters, and even mismatched armies (such as Ukraine’s) from adapting them to drop a grenade or IED, or to crash Kamikaze style.