bold than ever and feels more bold than ever and the palestinian _ feels more bold than ever and the palestinian people - feels more bold than ever and the palestinian people and - feels more bold than ever and| the palestinian people and the lebanese _ the palestinian people and the lebanese people _ the palestinian people and the lebanese people are - the palestinian people and the lebanese people are paying i the palestinian people and the . lebanese people are paying with their lives — lebanese people are paying with their lives. the _ lebanese people are paying with their lives. the price _ lebanese people are paying with their lives. the price of- lebanese people are paying with their lives. the price of this - their lives. the price of this impunitv _ we are back into a kind of mode now where we are seeing the americans once again quite publicly now, trying to exert pressure on the israelis. as an emergency meeting of un officials is called to discuss the war in gaza — america says it's made clear to israel that it must do everything to avoid civilian casualties in the territory. the us has already called on its ally— the us has already called on its ally to give much more aid to those — its ally to give much more aid to those displaced in gaza. we will assess _ to those displaced in gaza. - will assess where things stand in a conflict that shows no signs of ending. and — as the conflict between israel and hezbollah continues on, we'll be live in beirut. in this week's security brief —

miltiary expert mikey kay will dig deeper into the use of unmanned drones in the ongoing middle east conflicts. we begin in the middle east — and an emergency meeting of the united nations security council has been taking place to discuss the growing humanitarian crisis in gaza. it comes as international pressure on israel over the war in gaza, continues. days after the us secretary of state and secretary of defence threatened to pull military assistance to israel, unless more aid enters gaza — the un says some supplies are now reaching the north of the territory. it comes after a fortnight where, the un says no aid had reached the thousands of people trapped there. america's envoy to the united nations, linda thomas—greenfield told that emergency meeting of the security council that the us government has made it clear to israel that it must do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties in gaza.

a quote and quote a policy of starvation in gaza would be horrific and that unacceptable. it would here have implications under international law and us law. the government of israel has said this is not their policy, that food and other essential supplies would not be cut off and we will be watching to see that israel's actions on the ground match this statement.— the ground match this statement. ., ,, statement. the view on the us and united _ statement. the view on the us and united nations. _ israeli airstrikes on lebanon are continuing. in the past hour, the un peacekeeping force has said israel has fired again at one of its positions — this time near the southern lebanese of kafer kela. meanwhile in southern lebanon, the mayor of nabatieh has been killed in israeli strikes. these pictures give you an idea of the scale of the damage. at least sixteen people have been killed. the local governor has told

the bbc the strikes hit a meeting of the council's crisis co—ordination team — israel says it struck "dozens" of hezbollah targets in the area. meanwhile, the iran backed militant group, hezbollah says it is engaging in close—combat clashes with the idf in southern lebanon today. and further east it says it fired rockets at israeli troops in lebanese border villages as well as across the border. let's speak to ?hilal khashan, professor of political science at the american university of beirut. he is the author of five books including hizbullah: a mission to nowhere. welcome to the context. quite a lot to get through. i would like to start with developments related to gaza. we have seen another strong warning from the us to its ally israel related to civilian casualties in gaza but it has only been one day since we are reporting about a letter calling on more aid to enter the territory too. i want to get your perspective from where you are in the region about where you see the us in

this equation. i about where you see the us in this equation.— this equation. i don't know to what extent _ this equation. i don't know to what extent the _ this equation. i don't know to what extent the us _ this equation. i don't know to what extent the us is - this equation. i don't know to i what extent the us is capable of exerting pressure on the government of mr netanyahu. since the beginning of the war in gaza there have been frequent us demands that israel relaxes and allows food into gaza. i don't believe the extent of a us pressure has made much difference as far as the israeli government is concerned. israel has their policy and objectives in northern gaza to cut it off from the remainder of the gaza sector so i don't know if the israelis will heed american assistance and demands that they allow more food into northern gaza.— they allow more food into northern gaza. one of the thins i northern gaza. one of the things i wanted _ northern gaza. one of the things i wanted to - northern gaza. one of the things i wanted to ask- northern gaza. one of the i things i wanted to ask about was we were hearing about the news agency that qatar's prime minister has said that there have been no conversations or

engagement with any parties for the last three to four weeks when it comes to trying to secure a ceasefire in gaza. there was a time when we were talking about one being in a mint, where do you see things now, a lot of people are saying we will have to wait until the us election.— us election. we will have to wait until — us election. we will have to wait until mr _ us election. we will have to wait until mr netanyahu - wait until mr netanyahu achieves israeli objectives, he seems determined to undo the consequences of pulling out from gaza in 2005, and israel is especially now, the israeli cabinet is... some of its members believe it was a mistake for israel to pull out from gaza and as far as lebanon is concerned, some israelis, especially in the cabinet, believe that pulling out from lebanon in 2000 was a mistake. it seems israel is determined to return to that pre—2000 a yearin

to return to that pre—2000 a year in lebanon, pre—2005 in gaza. i believe that. the prime prime minister aims to stay after the us elections when... can i ask you about the situation where you are in lebanon as well because that is a new conflict that has opened up a new conflict that has opened up in the last few weeks, that so shows no signs of the escalating. so shows no signs of the escalating-— so shows no signs of the escalating. so shows no signs of the escalatinu. ~ ,,., , ., escalating. absolutely not. i don't believe _ escalating. absolutely not. i don't believe that _ escalating. absolutely not. i don't believe that the - escalating. absolutely not. i don't believe that the war i escalating. absolutely not. i don't believe that the war in j don't believe that the war in lebanon has peaked yet. israel wants to push hezbollah to the north, about 35 kilometres from the border with israel. then israel will negotiate a new deal with the lebanese government, now, israel believe that the united nation's security council resolution is no longer relevant and therefore they want a new arrangement and this explains why israel seems to be opposed

to the continued presence... thank you so much, we appreciate your comments. around the world and across the uk. this is bbc news.

welcome back to the context. it's time now for the security brief with my colleagues christian fraser and mikey kay. hello, everyone. welcome to our weekly edition of the security brief. a lot has happened since we last did this, some of which we had anticipated in the earlier editions of the security brief. the deterioration in northern gaza and that worsening situation in the jabalia refugee camp. the time that has passed between iran's ballistic missile attack and the

subsequent israeli response. we told you two weeks ago it might be delayed until israel's missile defence supplies have been replenished. we've just seen this week the deployment with 100 us troops of an american high altitude anti—missile system known as thad. and that brings us to the other big story this week, hezbollah's surprise attack on a military base near haifa with a uav, a drone, four soldiers killed and dozens more injured with a drone that somehow penetrated the israeli defence system, one of the biggest attacks on an idf position in over a year of fighting with me to discuss. as ever, our resident analyst, former senior british officer mikey kay, who for 20 years flew assault helicopters for the raf. he is a former strategic military planner and if you followed us before, you will know that we do this as he would deliver it within the armed forces. good to see you. you too. um, obviously we've talked before on the programme about how the israelis have dismantled the hezbollah

leadership, and yet they are still able to fire these rockets and the drones. why? well, they're still firing rockets, which are not guided. fairly indiscriminate. but i think what this week's drone attack has highlighted significantly is the major threat that the idf now face. uh, given this sort of asymmetric warfare, if you like, that western forces have seemingly found quite difficult to counter. we can go slide, please. um, if we just take a look at this week's attack, i think there's a couple of significant points about it. the first one being that it was roughly a0 miles inside of israeli territory. and i think that makes it significant when it when it comes to israel defending against attacks on, you know, some of its elite units, this was the golani brigade. they are the special special forces unit with inside the idf.

and as you say, it killed four and injured over 60. so that's significant. you uavs, as you call them in the business, unmanned aerial vehicle drone. to the rest of us, they're an ever evolving dynamic of the battlefield. um, do we know what type of drones they have, what this one was, and what sort of capability the group has? yeah, we'll come to sort of the breadth of the technology a little bit later on in the security brief. but what's interesting about this is analysts are calling or identifying this uav as the as the mirsad. slide, please. so the mirsad one is an iranian developed drone. it's very small and lightweight in comparison to some of the bigger drones that we'll see later on. it's got a range of about i20km, a payload of up to 40kg of explosives. so you can see the devastation that, you know, flying one of these drones into a target can create. the idf are saying that it actually launched two projectiles on the target before actually going

into the target. they're calling it a suicide drone, but that doesn't really make sense because there's no one flying it inside it. so more sort of a kamikaze style attack. it does have a top speed of about 370km, but i think the important bit of that is it can also fly very low and very slow, which makes it harder to counter. and the last bit of i think important information is it's got a low radar cross section and a radar cross section is the thing that any targeting radar or any search radar will look at and try to identify a potential target. now, what this strike tells us, which i think is very interesting, is that, yes, the leadership has been taken out, has been taken out. um, but the idf still have the ability to launch rockets and launch attacks like we've seen with this drone. so they've still got intelligence gathering capability, and the command and control structure seems to be in place. but critically, when it comes

to how the drone got through iron dome and the defence system is interesting because hezbollah and the idf are saying this is that the they're using a tactic where they basically overwhelm the iron dome system with rockets and then place these drones underneath it, which makes it harder to target. right. so when they talked about altitude, it wasn't per se the altitude itself. it was the fact that it was coming in, perhaps at a different altitude than a volley of missiles that was coming with it. right, with a lower radar cross section of a missile and a lower speed of a missile, which is what the targeting systems will look for. they'll look for speed and they'll look for direction of the target, and iron dome will only take out a missile if it knows that it's projecting onto a specific target. that could be lethal for the idf. that's really interesting. i mean, when you look at this, what are you seeing in terms of the development of this drone technology and in particular in the two major wars that we're focusing on, the one in the middle east and, of course, the one in ukraine? yeah. two of the buzzwords that

you'll hear when talking about drones, drones is obviously a very generic term. rps, which is a remotely piloted system. so there are predator drones over iraq that are flown by us forces inside the states, the us. and there are uavs, unmanned aerial vehicles, which could have a controller, but also could be gps guided and not have a controller and not have that ability to, interrupt what's called the radio frequency signal between a controller that you'd see on a drone and the actual drone itself. right. so, can you give us some some examples of that? i mean, can you, can you talk us through maybe some of the things that we've seen from from the theatres in both wars? yeah, i think there are i think there are four categories that are, that are really important to look at. but actually this idea of using an autonomous weapon, uh, goes back a long, long way. and if we, if we go to world war two, for example, slide. this is the vi rocket, the nazi vi rocket,

and it was nicknamed the doodlebug, which was used to great effect. and the nazis would effectively obviously there's no gps inside that, but the nazis would calculate how much fuel would needed to go in. and then when the fuel ran out somewhere over london, the vi would just drop out of the sky and indiscriminately hit what was below it. my grandparents used to talk about that. you'd hear it buzzing and then it would just stop. that's right. and that's when it fell. yeah. frightening. i mean, if you're underneath it. and the only way to counter this, and later on in the segment, we will talk about the, the conventional uses of counter—drone technology and what's out there in the future. but if we can go next slide please. what the british royal air force were doing. that's a spitfire on the right and a v—i rocket on the left. and the only way that the the royal air force back in the day could actually counter that is by flying alongside the v—i and actually tipping the wing to put it off track and putting it into the countryside. so that always and even today, there's this lack of counter drone technology, which we'll

come to a bit later. mhm. the houthis are using it to, to quite good effect. the houthis are and in fact this is a good time to look at sort of the, the spectrum of capability, if you like. and if you can go slide, please. this is the this is the black hornet. and you can just see how small that drone is in the hands of that operator. it's 16cm long. it has an ability to put a day camera on it and a night thermal camera on it, and this will really come into its own when you look at urban operations. look at soldiers operating in an urban environment. so, you know, they want to clear a block of houses, apartments. you can put this thing inside any room within those apartments or that building, and that will clear any imminent threat before the troops go in. and then we upscale a little bit. we go to the next sort of category, category two, if you like, slide please, which is viewers may recognise that that is a chinese made dji drone called a quadcopter because it's got four rotors and this is available all over the world to commercial

filmmakers to surveying capability orjust people using it for their own personal use. this is actually a photograph taken from ukraine, and the ukrainians have actually now weaponized this quadcopter, as you can see, and put a bomb on the bottom of it, which does have devastating effect. and we've got some video footage a little bit later on of that. then we go to category three. let's go back to the the mirsad one slide please. this is now sort of... you see the rotor blades have now disappeared. now you've got more of a fixed wing effect. so again, incredibly capable. travels at 370km. an hour can go up to 3000m. you can put a a0 kilogram payload in the top of it. but what this does is that it gives it range now. so now you're starting to bring range into it. 120km is significant when you look at the strike, which is a0 miles south of the israeli border, you know, that's almost double the capability of what this drone can do. very low tech, very low radar cross section and can move slow, which makes it harder to,

um, harder to target and detect. and then sort of the finally the the upscale end, if you like, of drone technology. slide, please. this is the triton, which is a replacement for the us global hawk system. what's really significant about this is it's got an altitude of 50,000ft, which is way higher than any civilian airliner will fly at, 30 hours. endurance. and what this does is it does isr and targeting. so intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and target tracking as well. and this is currently in use with the us military for anti maritime operations. so you know the breadth of where this capability has come from, right from that black hornet at the very beginning all the way through to commercially made up to, you know, this type of capability, this, this has come about in the last ten years. and it's, you know, phenomenal. you said you had some video. can we see it in operation? yeah. there's some examples of operation. let's take a look at this video first slide please. this is a warship

targeting a houthi drone. and the houthis are actually using drones to significant effect, um, targeting shipping, commercial shipping, uh, targeting destroyers, naval weapons. and you can just see through that video that again, you know, this sort of western lag and the ability to be able to take out drones is really hurting the west at the moment. someone's actually watching that. this is the remote. this is the remote application you're talking about. someone's flying it. exactly. well, yes, someone could be either flying it or it could be gps guided. so if it's gps guided, then you don't have that radio frequency signal that you can interrupt, which would be a counter, but you can't with these. plus they're launching many, many, many drones which is called swarming. so if you've got, you know, a couple of rockets that are available, then, you know, that's great. but if you've got 20, drones and you only take out five, it only takes one to get through. and i think that is what is providing western forces with a bit of a nightmare at the moment. there was a reuters

report that we saw, um, i think in the last week, russia now sourcing a lot of its technology from the chinese. how much of a focus is this now for moscow? and what does that mean for the rest of the defence industry? well, i mean, ithink some statistics coming out of ukraine at the moment. ukraine have lost, uh, 10,000 drones alone in the month of september. and again, information from ukraine, the russians launched 1300 drones inside ukrainian territory in september. so the reliance on drone technology, whether it's for intelligence, surveillance and gathering or whether it's used as a kamikaze style targeting capability. the russians have now realised that actually, you know, they can deter and provide force projection and significant effect inside ukraine with this capability. so now they're outsourcing and it's from the european intelligence agency that the sources came from for this reuters article. and basically outsourcing a weapons program for drones inside china. so the chinese are now in on this.

and as you go back, the chinese have got a lot of experience in this because of the the dji drone and the technology that's gone into that and made that so prolific. and i guess the big powers who've invested so much money in their defence systems are watching this slightly aghast at how fast it's advancing. i mean, just coming back to that attack in israel in binyamina, how do you defend against against the use of drones, particularly if they're coming in, as you say, in a swarm. with great difficulty. and there's been a huge lag in counter—drone capability that the west are slowly starting to keep up with. but it's a tit for tat game at the moment. there are conventional aspects that are being used to target drones. so for example, the uk launched a mission against houthi targets from royal air force using typhoons. a very good source has informed me that two asraam missiles. slide please. i'll show you what an asraam missile looks like. that's a advanced short range air to air missile, and that has an ir seeker head as a has a pretty good range on it.

two of those were launched by typhoons to take out houthi drones. but as we spoke about earlier, if you've got 20 houthi drones in the air, then this is going to be a really difficult thing to counter. those aircraft can carry, i think about four as rams and those units, those missiles are north of 200,000 a pop. the next layer of defence which could be used is what's called the c—ram, the counter—rocket artillery mortar. and these systems... if we can just go to a bit of footage, please. oh, yeah. 0kay. that's the c—ram in use. and they put it on strategic locations like baghdad international airport. um, it was used against an attack. attack in iraq on the us embassy, for example. and it works on a hosepipe system effectively. so it'lljust put loads and loads and loads of bullets in the air. all radar tracked in the hope the slew will take out the artillery or the rocket, or the mortar that has been has been fired in. it's a supremely

advanced system. but, you know, with the with the generic use of drones, you know, you can't put these systems everywhere. so you are tied to strategic locations. and as we saw, drones can get into cafes, houses, apartment blocks. so that's not going to be significant. now back to your point on the compact laser weapon system. this is where the future is going in terms of counter—drone. slide please. this has been made by boeing and it's effectively a five kilowatt laser to defeat drones. now up to 600kg. so now you're sort of getting into the mirsad one range. um, it's a layered defence system. so the first thing it will look at, or one of the things it will look at is the radio frequency. so if the uav is being controlled, that will have to have a radio frequency to control it. it can disrupt that. if it's autonomous, a uav with a gps guided system, then you're starting to look at what's called a atp radar, which is acquire track and point that will then be used to slew a laser beam onto the drone.

and what this capability can do, the clws, it can target many, many drones. so this swarming capability where all you need is one to get through this is where where it really comes into its own. now, what's interesting about this, cristian, is it's got a range of 650ft to 1.6 miles. that is key, because the iron dome system has a range from 2.5 miles to a0 miles. and as we know, the mirsad one managed to get through the iron dome system and attack its target. with a little bit of anticipation of what we might see in the future, it wouldn't surprise me if this capability, which has only been deployed with the united states marine corps who have recently proved it in trials in saudi arabia. it wouldn't surprise me if we see this compact laser weapon system with the idf in the coming weeks and coming months. have you asked them if they've got it? um, i think we should. i'm not sure we'll get the answer we want. it's a long step forward, though, isn't it, from tipping the wing of a vi? my goodness. and it shows you how quickly it's advancing. that was an education. and i think it will give people

context for what they're looking at when they hear about these attacks, and particularly the one we saw in the last week. mikey, as ever, thank you very much indeed. just a reminder that all our editions of the security brief are there on youtube. you can watch them back. there's a lot of good stuff there. so do take a look at that. and of course we will do this same time next week. thanks for watching. hello. despite some sunshine in the southeast corner of the uk for most today it's been grey, it's been misty and it's been very wet. good news is tomorrow much drier and brighter for almost all. there will be a few showers around, but nowhere near the rainfall we're seeing at the moment. that rain is coming courtesy of this cloud. here you can see the clear skies out to the west, but the heaviest rain underneath that is pushing its way northwards and eastwards, particularly wet during the middle part of the night in northern england and then later on in eastern parts of scotland. outbreaks of rain for a time elsewhere turning clearer from the south and west, with a few mist and fog patches forming as winds fall lighter, mayjust dip down into single figures in the countryside

here, but for most, another pretty mild night 11 to 15 degrees to start thursday morning. as for thursday morning, still grey and particularly wet to the north east of scotland. that will gradually clear away the wet and windy weather. morning mist, low cloud any patchy fog clears long sunny spells for many. there will be more cloud in the west at times, and justi or 2 isolated showers as the breeze picks up, but actually many will get through the day. dry on thursday and even though the air not quite as humid as today's, with more sunshine around ia to 18 celsius will still feel warm enough now through thursday evening. a chance of some heavy rain very close to the south east corner and east anglia, but for most through the night and into friday morning it will be dry. more in the way of mist, fog and low cloud forming though, and slightly cooler again. more of you in the countryside will see temperatures just dip in to single figures. quite enough start though, to friday before an active jet stream fires up an area of low pressure and weather fronts our way. now there will be some mist, low clouds and fog first thing, especially across parts of england, wales and southern scotland.

some of that will take a while to shift, but otherwise eastern areas dry, bright, increasingly hazy. the sunshine later. any early sunshine gives way to cloud in the west. outbreaks of rain most persistent later in the day, with strong winds in the west of scotland and northern ireland, but still a reasonably mild day given the winds coming in from the south or southwest. rain then through the night will push eastwards, but on saturday it could linger. east wales parts of central eastern england during the morning before clearing into the afternoon. sunnier spells, then a scattering of showers in the west. those could be heavy to the north and west of scotland, and temperatures will start to dip a little bit further. one thing to watch, though, as we go through into sunday. potential for quite a nasty area of low pressure spreading to the north of us. if that's close enough, we could see severe gales in northern scotland. wet and windy weather sweeping elsewhere. we'll keep you updated.

hello, i'm rajini vaidyanathan. you're watching the context on bbc news. ukraine's president zelensky presents — what he calls his �*victory plan' in the war against russia — claiming it could end �*no later than next year�* more on that in the moments, let�*s turn to the sport and join will perry. new england manager

thomas tuchel says he wants to make dreams come true at the world cup in 2026. the former chelsea boss was presented to the media at a press conference earlier today and will officially take charge on the 1st ofjanuary after signing an 18—month contract. when asked what he would say to those fans who wanted an englishman to get the job, this was his response. i�*m sorry. ijust have a german passport but i can just tell them and all of the supporters also felt my passion for the english premier league, my passion for the country and how i love to live here and work here and so, my memories are among the highest level and they play a huge role and hopefully, i can convince them and show them and prove to them that i am proud to be an english manager and i would everything to show respect to this role into this country, and the target for the next 18 months

is nothing else. and the biggest in football and never want can be