Lithuania presses ahead with drone detection system rollout

Lithuania’s military is installing a drone detection system at a “decent” pace, though bureaucratic obstacles remain, Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said, according to LRT.

The contract for the SkyFortress airspace monitoring system was signed in June. The Ukrainian-developed system detects low-flying objects by their sound or radio signals.

Kaunas said the priority was to install the system quickly and test it against different types of drones to see how well it identifies them. The longer-term goal is to combine data from all detection tools into one shared picture and improve the identification of objects in the sky. SkyFortress will use sound and radio frequencies to supplement radar data, he said.

The Defence Ministry has said the system can classify in real time objects that leave acoustic or electromagnetic traces.

On Saturday morning, a yellow air alert was issued for about 40 minutes in Vilnius County and Ukmergė. No object was detected, and the search was called off later that day. Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the National Crisis Management Centre, said a flock of birds could not be ruled out. Asked about the incident, Kaunas said it was a question for the military and that he did not want to speculate.