The IDF officially confirmed in late December that over 500 of its troops, along with nearly 60 police officers and ten Shin Bet intelligence personnel, had been killed to date since October 7, with hundreds more injured. With Israel's ground campaign in Gaza facing growing casualties, the IDF announced a "new phase" of the conflict this week featuring fewer sweeping deployments and more "targeted" raids and "surgical missions" - which apparently also includes a campaign of assassinations of Hamas leaders both in Israel and abroad. Hamas and its allies have taken the news as a sign that Tel Aviv's much-touted ground campaign in Gaza has been bogged down.
Israel has long seen reconnaissance, kamikaze and long-range strike drones as a key component of its military strategy, and is one of a handful of nations with a well-developed domestic drone development and production capability. Throughout the Gaza campaign and particularly amid the ground forces' advance, the IDF has turned to drones to be its troops' eyes and ears in the search for hidden Hamas fighters and tunnels in the ruins of the Palestinian enclave's cities.
The IDF has access to over a dozen different kinds of drones, from IAI Harpy loitering munitions and to IAI Heron medium-altitude long-endurance reconnaissance vehicles, small IAI Bird-Eye mini-UAVs used for military and paramilitary intelligence gathering, and General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper-style long-range strike drones called the Elbit Hermes 900.