Several NATO countries have agreed to create a “drone wall” as a first defense against “unfriendly countries” like Russia.
The announcement was made by Lithuanian's Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė during a meeting in Latvia.
It would consist of scores of UAVs being used by each country to monitor their occupied areas.
She said: “This is a completely new thing – a drone wall stretching from Norway to Poland – and the goal is to use drones and other technologies to protect our borders. […] against provocations from unfriendly countries and to prevent smuggling.”
According to Bilotaitė, Lithuania has already made plans to step up the protection of its border with the help of drones.
Lithuania's State Border Guard Service has recently established a UAV unit and is in the process of acquiring additional drones and anti-drone systems, she stressed.
Now the rest of the countries will go away and assess what “homework” needs to be done in order to link up with their NATO neighbors.
The Lithuanian minister could not say when the idea would be implemented but noted that the “drone wall” could be created using EU funds.
Bilotaitė added: “We agreed to hold regional drills to ensure the evacuation of the population, to see how our institutions are prepared to work, to interact with each other, what our capacity is to accommodate people, what the capacity of other countries is, whether they are ready to receive a certain number of our people.
“We still have a lot of questions. we need to look at all those algorithms. Drills would be very valuable as we would look at things, evaluate them and we would strengthen our preparedness.”
The plans are also currently being assessed by the EU which is expected to make recommendations in June.