Baltic Spy Satellites
Satellite reconnaissance for the Baltics — start by buying priority access to Germany's new Lithuania-focused constellation, then add national satellites only where the gap is real.
BDI research archive. Earlier Lithuania-focused proposals and scenario work, retained for historical reference. These are BDI concepts, not confirmed government programmes or current procurement records. Read the new defense business publication →
Historical BDI research
Research proposals
Lithuania-focused concepts from BDI’s earlier research. Their original assumptions are preserved; the new publication follows public buying and business decisions.
Constitutional Continuity of Government Reform
A single Russian salvo on central Vilnius could incapacitate both the President and the Speaker of the Seimas — the only two officeholders the Constitution authorises to exercise presidential powers — creating serious ambiguity over the chief-of-command role and the constitutionally clearest pathway for collective-defence requests to NATO.
Conventional Cost-Imposition Deterrence (Baltic-Anchored)
A Baltic-anchored, Lithuanian-led conventional strike arsenal — drones, cruise missiles, and a survival layer — sized to make any Russian or Belarusian aggression strategically unprofitable without depending on alliance resupply.
Counter-Drone Interceptor Swarm — Low-Cost Kinetic Tier
Lithuania has bought the high-end air defence; what is missing is a low-cost interceptor that can absorb the volume of mass Russian drone attacks without emptying million-dollar magazines.
Space-Domain Resilience and NATO APSS Contribution
Lithuania enters the alliance space-architecture rooms (APSS, CSpO, Treaty of Nancy follow-on) as an eastern-flank GLONASS-denial node and Space Situational Awareness contributor — moratorium-compliant, reversible-only, no kinetic anti-satellite weapons.
Sovereign Deep-Strike Drone Capability (1,000-1,500 km)
Lithuania has no sovereign way to make a Russian aggressor pay a price on Russian territory; this initiative flags the gap and recommends a costed study of a Ukrainian-style long-range drone tier (€30,000-60,000 per unit, 1,000-1,500 km range) paired with a hardened home air defence built first.
Codify and Oversight-Harden Fast Defense Procurement
Lithuania already buys defence equipment fast on a case-by-case basis, but has no statute, no central agency, and no anti-corruption guard rails — leaving every minister exposed to a repeat of the 2024 Anušauskas bribery scandal.
Defensive Drone Interceptor Fleet (Sub-€5K Consumable Layer)
A sub-€5K consumable interceptor layer to absorb Geran-2 attrition and Gerbera decoys, freeing Lithuania's higher-tier missiles for the jet-powered Geran-3 that small drones cannot catch.
Distributed Layered Air Defense Network
The Iran war of 28 February to 8 April 2026 broke the Western air-defence model: Lithuania can neither buy enough premium interceptors nor afford to fire them at cheap drones. The only sustainable answer is a layered network of many low-cost effectors.
Defense-Coded Energy Infrastructure Hardening (MoD Gap-Fill on Litgrid €382M)
A defense-specific gap-fill of about €182M on the existing September 2025 Litgrid hardening program, focused on what only the Ministry of Defence can do — transformer reserves, military microgrids, territorial-guard doctrine, and cyber repair.
French Extended Deterrence Inclusion Pathway for Lithuania
Lithuania is absent from the partner list Macron named at Île Longue on 2 March 2026 — the realistic path is a multi-year diplomatic effort, not a near-term hosting deal.
Lithuanian Border Defense Line
A 952 km denial line along Lithuania's hostile border with Belarus and Kaliningrad, built from mines, ditches, drones and restored wetlands rather than concrete bunkers — €2.5-3.5 billion over eight years, benchmarked to Poland's Shield East.
Low-Cost Loitering Munition Mass Production
Lithuania cannot import strike drones at the volume a real war demands, so it has to build its own — starting with a working Granta production line that today turns out only several hundred FPV drones a month.
Distributed Mass MANPADS — Riflemen Union, Territorial Defense, and Critical Infrastructure
Field roughly 2,100 shoulder-fired and tripod-mounted air-defense missiles across regular brigades, uniformed reservists, and protected sites, to deny low-altitude airspace to Russian helicopters and drones in the years before larger systems arrive.
Offensive Cyber Effects Branch — LTCYBERCOM
Lithuania's defensive Cyber Defence Command stood up on 1 January 2025; the missing piece is an offensive-effects branch that can contribute named cyber strikes to allied operations the way France, the United Kingdom, and the United States already do.
Baltic Sea Mine Warfare and Chokepoint Denial Capability
Lithuania has already signed into the 10-nation Naval Mines Cooperation framework and the Finland-led joint Blocker mine procurement; the task now is to define what Lithuania adds inside it — an expanded minehunter fleet, a credible national mine stockpile, and the legal authority to use it.
Baltic SIGINT and Electronic Intelligence Enhancement
Lithuania shares a 273-kilometre land border with Russian Kaliningrad — a target-rich electromagnetic environment its military intelligence can exploit to feed allied targeting, if existing capacity is augmented and integrated into NATO.
Mobile Tethered Low-Altitude Surveillance Network
A mobile network of small tethered drones at 100-200 metres altitude that watches the airspace below 500 metres — the band where Russian FPV strike drones, Orlan reconnaissance drones, and Geran-2 cruise drones operate, and where ground radar cannot see.
Total National Mobilization Doctrine
A costed Lithuanian total-mobilization doctrine sitting beneath NATO forward defence — the third layer that activates only if the multinational brigade and the German brigade in Lithuania are overrun.
Underwater Autonomous Vehicle Capability for Baltic Seabed Defense
Lithuania has zero sovereign capability to monitor the seabed cables and pipelines carrying its electricity, gas, and data — a gap exposed by the 2022-2025 chain of Baltic cable incidents whose attribution courts have now contested.