Expert says Latvia’s border counter-drone systems will work in peacetime

Latvia plans to deploy counter-drone systems and radars along its entire border with Russia and Belarus by the end of September, but their effectiveness will depend on how densely the border is covered, LSM reported.

Defence Minister Raivis Melnis said the work was progressing according to plan. Locally produced systems are already deployed along the border, although currently in insufficient numbers.

The systems are intended to reduce the cost of downing drones during peacetime. A drone that entered Latvian airspace early on Friday came from Belarus, Melnis said, and allied fighter aircraft were needed to shoot it down. The cost of one such shot can reach 1.5 million euros.

“By the end of September, we plan to deploy these drone interception systems along the entire Latvian border with Russia and Belarus, and we will do so,” Melnis said.

Additional radars will also be installed at the border. These elements are needed to detect and identify as quickly as possible targets approaching the state border, military expert Mārtiņš Vērdiņš, author of the Vara bungas blog, told Latvijas Radio.

Vērdiņš said the new system would be effective in peacetime incidents involving one or perhaps several drones. A military threat would be different, he said, because there could be many drones deliberately trying to evade anti-aircraft fire.

He said the effectiveness would depend on whether the project was completed in one phase or developed over several stages. If the systems entered combat duty simultaneously, the result would differ from a gradual process in which effectiveness increased as more systems were added.

“However, it will most likely never be 100 percent,” Vērdiņš said.