Israel UAV crashes over West Bank in latest malfunction

An Israeli drone fell out of the sky onto West Bank territory yesterday, in the latest such incident to take place in recent months.

In an announcement by the Israeli military yesterday, it confirmed that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of a Skylark model crashed and fell in the northern West Bank for unknown reasons, while it was on a reconnaissance mission.

Shortly after its fall, it was collected by Israeli Occupation soldiers, with the announcement assuring that there was no leak of information taken from the fallen drone.

Created by Israel’s Elbit Systems and operated by the Israeli military’s Artillery Corps, the Skylark drones are tactical surveillance UAVs which are able to be launched by one or two people and provide live video feed while airborne to troops on the ground.

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Yesterday’s crash was the second to have taken place within the past few weeks, with a previous one having fallen at the border along the besieged Gaza Strip on 23 December. Prior to that, two other Skylark drones also crashed in the West Bank cities of Hebron and Nablus in separate incidents in October.

Such incidents come five years after the entire Skylark drone fleet was grounded in 2017 following a series of other crashes that year. The issue in those cases were reportedly with the Skylark 2 model, which frequently malfunctioned.

In 2022, however, the Skylark 3 model was introduced as a reportedly significant improvement to its predecessor’s issues. Although it was not confirmed which model yesterday’s crashed drone or those last year were, pictures of the fallen UAVs appear to show them as Skylark 2, which would bring into question why they are still actively being operated by Israeli Occupation Forces.

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