Lithuania Seeks to Ease Rules for Shooting Down Drones

Reform.news Editorial Team · 20 October 2026, 11:00

https://reform.news/en/lithuania-seeks-to-ease-rules-for-shooting-down-drones/

Lithuania plans to ease the rules governing the shooting down of drones. Consultations with NATO will be launched on the matter, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said.

“I have called for consultations with NATO to begin (…). This will probably be implemented within a month so that we can review this algorithm,” he said, according to LRT.

Current rules require visual contact with an object before it can be fired upon. Lithuania wants radar data alone to be sufficient for a pilot to make the decision.

“Most likely, there is room and scope for this, and NATO could probably leave it to national legislation: if we decide that there is an object, we see it on radar, fighter jets are airborne, and we decide to shoot it down, it will be shot down,” Sinkevičius said.

It should be noted that Poland has already introduced similar changes. Weapons can now be used against unmanned aerial vehicles based on radar data and other indicators that allow an object to be identified, without a mandatory requirement for visual contact.

In Poland, both Polish fighter jets and those of allied countries carry out airspace patrol and interception missions. In Lithuania, air policing duties are performed exclusively by pilots from NATO allies.