Lithuania Mulls Airspace Closures Amid Rising Drone Incursions from Belarus
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Lithuanian authorities are actively considering partial airspace closures to counter the increasing threat posed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) entering the country illegally from Belarus, Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said Tuesday.
Speaking after a high-level meeting with President Gitanas Nausėda and military leadership at the Presidential Palace, the minister underscored the bureaucratic complexity involved in responding to aerial threats under current regulations. “When NATO air police are tasked with destroying an object, it is difficult to bureaucratically close certain areas of airspace so that they would be free of civilian objects. A lightning-fast closure is impossible,” Šakalienė told reporters. She noted that procedural groundwork for such closures is now being prepared, though the final decision to engage aerial targets in peacetime will remain with the political leadership.
Her remarks come amid the third consecutive day of military search operations for an unidentified drone believed to have entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus early Monday.
“The search resumed this morning,” said Indrė Pilkauskaitė, a spokesperson for the Lithuanian Armed Forces. Military personnel, including the Military Police and an Air Force helicopter unit, focused Tuesday’s efforts on an area 20 kilometres north of Kaunas, interviewing residents and maintaining readiness to isolate or neutralise the drone, should it be located.
“More than 100 people have been questioned over the past few days. A standby unit for peacetime operations and an explosives disposal team remain on alert,” Pilkauskaitė said. “Search efforts continue with the same capacity and will go on until we find it.”
The initial alarm was raised by residents who reported hearing an unusual sound. However, Chief of Defence General Raimundas Vaikšnoras later confirmed that Lithuanian military systems had detected the drone while it was still in Belarusian airspace. He said the search would continue “for a reasonable period of time” as authorities assess any potential threat.
The latest incident follows a similar breach earlier this month. On July 10, a Russian-made Gerbera drone — designed to mimic the Iranian Shahed UAV in an apparent effort to confuse air defences — entered Lithuanian territory from Belarus and crashed within three minutes.
In response to the mounting threat, General Vaikšnoras announced the redeployment of a Lithuanian air defence unit closer to the Belarusian border. “Air defence vigilance has been increased and a unit of the air defence battalion has been redeployed with the ability to detect with combined measures and, if necessary, to destroy,” he said, while declining to elaborate on specific capabilities or resources.
Lithuania’s first post-independence leader, Vytautas Landsbergis, voiced sharp criticism of the authorities’ response to the latest incursion. “Those who failed to defend Lithuania from one lousy Eastern drone did very badly. They broke their oath as soldiers,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Any air trash that violates our border must be shot down.”
Military analysts and several political observers have speculated that both drone incidents may be linked to broader electronic warfare strategies involving Ukraine, where misdirection tactics are reportedly being employed to confuse Russian UAV systems.
