This story is a part of the weekly newsletter about economy, defence, and tech in the eastern flank of Nato, How we cee it.
Several drones have crashed within the territory of the Baltic states since Sunday, serving as a reminder of the war nearby.
No one was hurt in any of the incidents, but the events have exposed gaps in airspace monitoring.
On the night of Sunday (22 March) to Monday, an object exploded and fell into a lake in the village of Lavysas in southern Lithuania, not far from the border with Belarus.
The Lithuanian military reported that the drone was not detected by radar. Authorities only learned of the incident on Monday afternoon, after a local resident called it in.
The episode points to a broader problem: protecting airspace against the cheap, slow, low-flying drones that have become a defining feature of modern warfare and are capable of wreaking havoc on everything from military targets to civilian infrastructure.
Despite efforts to build a so-called drone wall, the airspace of the Baltic states remains vulnerable.
The drone that came down in Lithuania was likely a stray Ukrainian unmanned aircraft en route to strike Russia’s Baltic port of Primorsk. According to the Lithuanian defence minister Robert Kaunas, the drone could have been affected by electronic warfare.
Lithuania had previously deployed air defence assets near Vilnius after two Russian drones crashed in the country in July last year. However, Varena is a bit further from the capital, and no air defence assets were stationed in the sparsely populated region at the time of the incident.
Defence minister warned that such incursions are likely to happen again as the war continues and military technology advances, underscoring the need to strengthen Lithuania’s air defences.
The detection failure is not unique to Lithuania.
According to former Lithuanian army chief Jonas Vytautas Žukas, deficiencies in drone detection capabilities extend to Latvia, Estonia and even Poland. “The problem is being solved, but the time frames are very long,” he told the Lithuanian news agency LRT.
Addressing the gap, the defence minister said Lithuania has ordered additional radars capable of tracking low-flying objects — some have already arrived but are not yet fully integrated, while others have not yet reached the country.
The Lithuanian Armed Forces TACP unit directs combat aircraft in close air support and other air-to-ground operations (Source: Wikimedia)
More drones crashed in Latvia and Estonia
The drone incidents continued on Wednesday across the other two Baltic states. A drone that entered Estonian airspace from Russia struck a chimney at the Auvere power station in Ida-Viru County early that morning. No one was injured and the power infrastructure was not damaged.