Executive Summary
The Russian one-way attack drone threat has split in two. The Geran-2 (a piston-engine Shahed cruising at roughly 185 km/h, with a 50 kg warhead and a unit cost of $20-50K) is still the volume target, and small interceptor drones in the $2-7K range can defeat it on a tail-chase. The Geran-3 is different. It is a jet-powered variant cruising at 500-600 km/h with a warhead of up to 300 kg and a ceiling near 9,000 m (Army Recognition; UNITED24). A small interceptor at 343 km/h cannot catch it from behind: the closing speed is negative, so the chase is physically impossible. Geran-3 has to be engaged head-on or by gun and missile systems already in Lithuania's inventory or pipeline. That pipeline is the right starting point. In April 2026 alone, Lithuania's cabinet approved 48 Merops AS-3 fixed-wing interceptors (22 April, LRT), the United States notified a $214M AIM-9X sale (24 April), an additional €234M of NASAMS deliveries arrived for the 1st Division, a Polish APS contract was let for energy-site counter-drone defence, and the German Panzerbrigade 45 deployed Skyranger 30 guns under host-nation arrangements. Latvia's Origin BLAZE was delivered to Estonia, Latvia and Belgium in February 2026; Lithuania is not on that customer list. The recommended next step is a defence-ministry feasibility study, run with industry and allied input, that maps the cheapest sustainable layer to absorb the Geran-2 and Gerbera decoy tier, evaluates whether to join the BLAZE supply chain or scale the domestic Granta line, and sets honest magazine-depth targets against Russia's March 2026 tempo of 4,186 strike-Shahed per month. The specific platform mix, production ramp, and budget envelope are decisions for the Ministry of National Defence and the Seimas to determine.
The Problem
Russia's drone campaign in March 2026 reached 6,462 launches and 4,186 strike-Shahed in a single month, with a single-night peak of 810 drones (Euronews, 2 April 2026). The mix is now Geran-2 piston drones, Geran-3 jet drones, and Gerbera decoys at roughly $10K each that saturate radar pictures and force expensive interceptors onto cheap targets. Vilnius sits 35 km from the Belarusian border; a Geran-3 covers that distance in about 3.8 minutes, leaving a 15-km detection ring at only 1.6 minutes — too short for a tail-chase intercept.
Even after the April 2026 procurement wave, Lithuania has no high-volume sub-€5K consumable layer to absorb Geran-2 and Gerbera attrition. Without one, every engagement burns an AIM-9X at roughly $480K or an AIM-120 at $1.2M — a 16:1 to 40:1 cost-exchange in Russia's favour. There is no demonstrated cueing chain from the Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control system (Northrop Grumman Baltic contract, December 2021) to cheap effectors at Lithuanian sites, and no domestic production line at the volume the threat tempo demands.
Without action: High-end interceptor stocks are burned on decoys; magazine collapse becomes likely on the first 810-drone night (a 2,000-effector fleet at 90% kill probability and a 3:1 doctrine covers about 74% of that wave); critical infrastructure leaks at roughly 26% in the catastrophic case. The Iran war of 28 February to 8 April 2026 (39 days) drew down US Patriot stocks by about 50% and THAAD by more than 50% (Fox News; CSIS); Lockheed's $4.76B PAC-3 contract of 10 April 2026 only delivers by June 2030. The high-end magazine is now a strategic-rare resource.
Lithuanian Context
Lithuania's April 2026 air-defence baseline already includes 48 Merops AS-3 (cabinet 22 April), a notified $214M AIM-9X sale (24 April), €234M of additional NASAMS, a Polish APS contract for energy-site defence, and Skyranger 30 guns hosted with the German Panzerbrigade 45. The 2026 defence budget is €4.79B at 5.38% of GDP, with a weapons envelope near €1.7B and a counter-drone allocation of about €145M. The Seimas amendments of 23 September 2025 to the Law on Aviation and the Statute on Use of Military Force authorise instant engagement of airspace-violating drones (Minister Šakalienė, Militarnyi); the authority is airspace-only and does not cover ground or maritime targets. Macron's Île Longue announcement of 2 March 2026 named Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark as European partners on strategic deterrence dialogue; the Baltic states are absent from that list, not explicitly excluded. The Treaty of Nancy (Poland-France, 9 May 2025) and its Gdansk follow-up of 20 April 2026 do not include Lithuania. A counter-drone feasibility study should be commissioned to test whether joining the BLAZE supply chain, scaling Granta X-Wing domestically, or some combination is the cheapest sustainable answer to Geran-2 and Gerbera mass.