Lithuania seeks cheaper alternatives to downing drones

Lithuania needs alternatives to fighter jets and expensive missiles for shooting down drones, President Gitanas Nausėda said after a drone was downed in Kaišiadorys District, LRT reported.

The drone, which entered Lithuania from Belarus on Tuesday night, was probably a Russian-made Gerbera unmanned aircraft intended to attack Ukraine but diverted from its course, Nausėda said after a meeting of the State Defence Council.

“Its electronic components are still being analysed. It appears that it will be possible to recover information and establish much more about where it came from, how and under what circumstances,” Nausėda said. “Most likely, this was not deliberate action against Lithuania.”

Army Commander Raimundas Vaikšnoras said the operation showed that Lithuanian and allied troops were cooperating effectively.

“It clearly showed that both the operators on duty in our air force and the allies carrying out the air defence mission are coordinating, know where to act and what to do. The result is visible,” Vaikšnoras said.

Nausėda said more such incidents could occur. He said drones needed to be identified as quickly as possible and that alternative ways of bringing them down should be found because missiles were expensive.

Security and defence expert Giedrimas Jeglinskas said the problem was not only the cost of missiles. Replenishing stocks could take years, he said, adding that it could take five to 10 years to replace NASAMS missiles once they had been used.

Jeglinskas pointed to interceptor drones, which are used in Ukraine, as one simpler alternative. Laser-based solutions are also being tested, he said.

“We have world-class laser professionals. Perhaps we should give them the task of creating a laser whose shot costs nothing and requires only a certain amount of energy,” Jeglinskas said.

However, he stressed that Lithuania first needed to address gaps that prevented it from accurately assessing what was flying in the country’s airspace.

Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said a multilayered air defence system should be ready by the end of next year. He said additional measures were already being taken.

“Additional radars have been installed on our border, and new radars are being installed,” Kaunas said. He added that the process faced technical problems, including the need for infrastructure such as poles to place radars at height rather than on the ground, as well as procurement and installation procedures.

The State Defence Council also discussed a drone that may have flown over Varėna District early on Sunday. Authorities have not ruled out that it was the same drone later found in Poland.

“We are also investigating the possibility that the drone found on Poland’s northern coast could be the drone that flew over Lithuania,” Nausėda said.

Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz also said that a Russian-origin Gerbera drone carrying explosives, which crashed on the coast, may have reached Poland through Lithuania.

“Everything points to this being a test of a new drone, which may have flown across the entire territory of the Republic of Lithuania, then the Kaliningrad region and over the Baltic Sea. We must prepare for such situations because they may happen again, and more than once,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

Nausėda said Lithuania had failed the test in this case because residents were not informed of the possible air danger on Sunday morning. He said both the public information system and the available means of destroying the drone should have been used.