The IDF on Thursday morning disclosed that recently the personal command vehicle of the IDF Northern Command Chief Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo was struck by a Hezbollah drone while he was visiting sub-commanders in southern Lebanon.
Milo was unharmed, but only because he happened to have left the vehicle to meet with other commanders shortly prior to the attack.
Although the incident was only revealed on Thursday, it apparently occurred sometime in the last couple of weeks, such that it will not impact the latest ceasefire announcement.
Had Milo been harmed, let alone killed, it would have been viewed as a strategic victory for Hezbollah, since he would have been the highest-ranked Israeli commander killed during the war.
Until now, the highest-ranked killed IDF commanders have been colonels, with only a few killed, and the highest-ranked wounded commander was a brigadier general.
The IDF's head of the northern command is often viewed as potentially in line to be a future IDF chief, with only the IDF deputy chief being viewed as clearly ranked above him.
IDF struggles to combat FPV drones for months
There is an expectation that safety regulations for top IDF and Israeli political officials visiting the Lebanon front will become stricter following the incident.
The IDF has struggled now for months to combat the new Hezbollah manually piloted, non-GPS, FPV drones, and while some progress has been made to defend against them, no complete answer is expected at least for some additional months.