Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė has said she will table legislative amendments to authorise border guards to shoot down balloons illegally crossing into Lithuania’s airspace with contraband.
“Our message is clear: we’ll come forward with a legislative amendment that will enable our officers to destroy such an object,” she told reporters on Monday.
The minister’s comment came after a balloon, suspected of having come from Belarus with smuggled cigarettes, fell within Vilnius Airport’s airfield late on Saturday. The defence minister then commented that the border guards should shoot down such balloons.
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Commenting on the situation, Rustamas Liubajevas, the commander of the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service (VSAT), told BNS earlier on Monday that border guards did not have the weapons or the legal authority to shoot down such objects.
According to Bilotaitė, balloons used for smuggling are equipped with GPS transmitters, which allow criminals to locate the cargo once they are across the border.
“A proposal is being discussed with the Communications Regulatory Authority to restrict the GPS signal of these communication devices. We’re looking at concrete solutions,” she said.
The minister did not specify when these legislative amendments could be adopted and border guards would be authorised to shoot down at least low-flying balloons carrying contraband.
Border guards say they noticed an increase in this type of smuggling last spring and have already informed the Interior Ministry.
Bilotaitė said the ministry has already had “more than one working meeting with the VSAT leadership” to discuss the need to shoot down such balloons.
When asked if there are plans to purchase weapons capable of shooting down these types of objects for the VSAT, Bilotaite said the service is continuously being strengthened.
Border guards also say that they cannot detect most weather balloons when they cross the Lithuanian border, because they are too high up and could only be spotted by military radars.
Threat to civil aviation
President Gitanas Nausėda says that weather balloons used for smuggling also pose a threat to civil aviation.
“The problem is not just the contraband or possibly other more dangerous cargo that could be placed there. The problem is also the safety of our civil aviation, because the wind can blow these objects into flight zones,” Nausėda said in an interview with LRT TV on Monday evening.
“And I don’t even want to speculate what could happen if an aircraft were to hit such an object,” he added.
Border guards say they could theoretically take down such balloons if they come closer to the ground, but they do not have the authority to do so. Balloons flying at higher altitudes are out of reach for them.
Meanwhile, the Lithuanian Armed Forces, which can detect such flying objects, say they are monitoring them but do not comment on their tracking due to the sensitivity of radar information.
The military also emphasises that shooting down these balloons in peacetime would be an extreme measure.
Nausėda, meanwhile, is calling for better communication among institutions.
“Some don’t see them, some don’t have weapons, and others have weapons but don’t see them – this just doesn’t sound serious, and it’s not something they should be discussing publicly,” the president told LRT TV.
“They can handle this much more simply and then announce what they’ve decided and how they’re going to deal with this issue,” he added.
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