Executive Summary
Centralised defence factories are easy targets. The Russian Ministry of Defence target list circulated on 15 April 2026 names concentrated industrial sites; a single Iskander strike can stop a production line for months. Ukraine has shown a different model since 2022: thousands of small printers in homes, university labs, and volunteer cells produced FPV drone airframes, mortar tail fins, and weapon mounts, with new designs pushed to the network within 48 hours of validation. Lithuania has the raw ingredients: Vilnius University Faculty of Mechanics, Kaunas University of Technology materials engineering, the Vilnius Hackerspace, the KTU Maker Lab, and Granta Autonomy already using additive tooling for drone production. The missing piece is coordination. The recommended next step is a feasibility study by the Ministry of National Defence, with KTU and Vilnius University input, that examines part libraries, quality certification, feedstock security (aerospace-grade aluminium and titanium powders from Hoganas in Sweden and AMG in Germany; PLA, PA12, and PEEK polymers), and how a 50-150 node network would sit alongside the EU Defence Industrial Strategy 2024 distributed-manufacturing pillar. Final scope and structure are for Lithuania to determine.
The Problem
Lithuanian defence production is concentrated in a small number of named sites. The Russian Ministry of Defence target list circulated on 15 April 2026 names Vilnius and several industrial nodes. A single Iskander-M ballistic missile from Kaliningrad reaches Vilnius in 102 to 146 seconds; a single Iskander-K cruise missile from Belarus reaches it in 130 to 175 seconds. One strike per site can take a production line offline for months. Ukraine learned this in 2022 and 2023 when Russian missiles hit several drone factories; output dipped roughly 20 percent before distributed printing networks absorbed the loss.
There is no national registry of capable printers, no certified part library, no feedstock reserve, and no tasking platform that connects military demand to civilian and university capacity. Granta Autonomy and a handful of primes print in-house; the wider maker base is unmapped.
Lithuanian Context
Lithuania has the academic and maker base (Vilnius University, KTU, Vilnius Hackerspace, KTU Maker Lab) and a serious additive user in Granta Autonomy, but no national coordination layer. Feedstock supply for aerospace-grade aluminium and titanium powders depends on Hoganas in Sweden and AMG in Germany, and on polymer suppliers for PLA, PA12, and PEEK; a strategic reserve is the obvious resilience step. Whether the network sits under the Defence Materiel Agency, an expanded Miltech Sandbox mandate, or a university-led consortium is a Lithuanian determination.