Tunnels in southern Lebanon aren't new. For decades, the Israeli military has cleared out crude dirt bunkers and narrow concrete trenches. But what commandos just uncovered beneath the hilltop village of Majdal Zoun changes the math entirely.
Buried 29 meters under the limestone hills, just six kilometers from the Israeli border, sits a fully functioning subterranean drone factory and launch base. It runs for hundreds of meters through the mountain. It even snakes directly underneath a local mosque, using civilian life as a physical shield.
This isn't a makeshift hiding hole. It is a highly engineered asset built over the last decade with direct Iranian funding, planning, and architectural oversight.
The Subterranean Factory Floor
When Israeli paratroopers and reservist commandos breached the massive steel blast doors guarding the facility, they found a miniature military complex. The main tunnel is wide enough to drive a standard vehicle through. Its reinforced concrete walls were lined with advanced technical workstations.
Inside, troops seized roughly 50 Iranian-made explosive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in various stages of assembly. These aren't off-the-shelf hobby quadcopters. They are long-range attack drones packed with 30-kilogram warheads, sporting a flight radius of 200 to 500 kilometers. That is enough range to threaten almost any point inside Israel.
The military logistics operation required to keep this site running is staggering. Alongside the aircraft, troops found eight tons of raw explosive materials stored in dedicated, climate-controlled side rooms.
The design standard mirrors an underground Iranian missile factory discovered in northwest Syria during a September 2024 raid. The engineering represents a massive leap forward from the simpler tactical tunnels found in previous border operations.
Launching From the Deep
The most dangerous part of the Majdal Zoun facility is how it handles deployment. Standard drone teams usually have to set up launchers out in the open, exposing them to immediate airstrikes.
Hezbollah solved this by carving secret launch shafts directly through the hillside. Drones could be assembled, armed, and fueled completely underground, then rolled to a shaft and fired into the sky without an operator ever stepping into the daylight.
The geography matters here. The site sits close to the Mediterranean coastline. This positioning gives operators multiple launch trajectories, letting them steer suicide drones over the water to bypass land-based radar and missile defense networks.
The Israeli Air Force actually bombed the location during hostilities to seal the entrances. Yet intelligence showed Hezbollah operatives immediately swarmed the area to excavate the rubble and restore operations. This forced a ground assault by commando units to physically seize and clear the mountain. Three Hezbollah gunmen were killed in close-quarters combat inside the village during the advance.
The Intelligence Windfall
Military analysts are calling the capture a massive intelligence victory. Previously, engineers had to piece together drone capabilities from twisted wreckage and exploded fragments. Securing dozens of intact guidance systems, wiring harnesses, and Iranian factory components gives tech units a pristine look at exactly how these weapons operate.
The captured inventory matches the specific drone models used in several deadly strikes, including the October 2024 attack on the Golani Brigade's training base. Engineers are already reverse-engineering the electronics to build better jamming frequencies and tracking algorithms.
The immediate next step for the engineering teams on the ground is simple but permanent. Once the final technical scans and intelligence logging are complete, specialized Yahalom demolition units will pack the chambers with explosives and drop the entire mountain structure into itself.
The IDF operation to dismantle these hidden facilities continues inside the newly designated security zone.
To understand the broader operational environment and the shifting frontlines where these subterranean bases are being uncovered, watch this Report on Southern Lebanon Operations which details the intense psychological warfare and high-stakes ground clashes currently taking place between Israeli forces and Hezbollah units.
