Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre (NKVC) convened an inter-institutional meeting on Tuesday to enhance cooperation and response to drone threats following a second alleged incursion from Belarus within a month on Monday.
“This incident has highlighted the need to improve information exchange algorithms, communication channels and response times between institutions, services and the military,” the government press service said.
The meeting aims to clarify responsibilities and strengthen inter-institutional coordination using existing tools to provide the public with faster and more accurate information about threats posed by unmanned aerial vehicles.
Key measures include setting clear decision-making deadlines, committing to real-time information sharing among all agencies, and maintaining a 24/7 coordination system. The report also emphasises the importance of all authorities using standardised reporting formats and having access to a centralised information flow.
Representatives from the Defence Ministry, Police Department, State Border Guard Service, Armed Forces and Fire and Rescue Department attended the meeting.
The agencies have been tasked with submitting agreed procedures for detecting and potentially neutralising drones entering Lithuanian airspace by the end of August.
The discussion follows two separate drone incidents within the same month.
On July 10, a drone entered Lithuanian territory, initially believed to be a Shahed – a type widely used by Russia in its war against Ukraine. It was later identified as a Russian-made Gerbera drone, a model designed to resemble the Shahed and intended to deceive Lithuanian air defence. The drone crashed just three minutes after crossing the border.
Then, on the morning of July 28, another drone – still unidentified and also believed to have originated from Belarus – breached Lithuanian airspace for an undetermined period. The search operation is still ongoing.
Lithuania's Chief of Defence, General Raimundas Vaikšnoras, has said he cannot rule out the possibility that it was not a drone, but something else, that entered Lithuanian airspace on Monday.
"We are looking into various versions, one of which is based on the last possible trail where the unidentified object could have moved, and several areas were checked. [...] We are also looking into other versions to see if it is in Lithuania or if it is a complete fake," Vaikšnoras told LRT on Tuesday.
"It is possible that there was no object that flew into Lithuania at all, and now the residents who first saw or heard it and reported it to the emergency response centre are being questioned because today it seems that the vast majority of people heard something but they didn't see it," he said.
The second drone was first reported to the authorities by local residents who were awoken by loud noise. Nevertheless, the Chief of Defence has since said that the army had detected the object while it was still in Belarus. It remains unclear whether the drone detected by the military was the same one reported by civilians.
To aid the neutralisation of potential threats, Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė has pledged to establish closed airspace corridors.
“The unresolved legal framework we have had for years is now being sorted out very quickly and we accelerated the process in June,” Šakalienė told LRT.
“We will have a final result within weeks where we will be able to have some closed air corridors, so that, for example, after informing NATO fighter jets, it will be possible for the fighter pilots to destroy certain targets without stress, without fear of damaging some civilian facility,” she added.
The minister said the air policing mission could be authorised at any time to neutralise objects within Lithuanian territory.
Meanwhile, Presidential adviser Frederikas Jansonas has warned that recent drone incursions from Belarus reveal significant gaps in Lithuania’s air defence capabilities, saying “the border’s air defence is quite holey,” during an interview with Žinių radijas on Tuesday.
Jansonas stressed that Lithuania must enhance its capacity to detect low-flying drones and establish a clear protocol for neutralising such threats using either electronic warfare or kinetic methods.
"A soldier standing at the border just needs to know that he can do it [neutralise the drone] and will not be held responsible for shots fired in the border area," the presidential adviser said.
He also pointed to shortcomings in institutional coordination, noting that despite the army detecting the drone early, the first reports to the police came from members of the public.
"This shows that we have a problem," Jansonas added.
Updated: edited the headline, added information about NKVC talks, included comments from Chief of Defence, Defence Minister.
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