Executive Summary
Granta Autonomy, run by Gediminas Guoba, produces several hundred FPV drones a month at the start of 2026 against a target of thousands (dronelife.com, 30 September 2024). Ukraine delivered about 3 million FPV in 2025 with 2026 capacity of 8 million a year (Ukrainska Pravda). Russia's Yelabuga line runs 3,000 to 5,500 Shahed-class a month, the March 2026 tally hit 4,186 (Euronews), and the Geran-3 jet variant cruises 300 to 370 km/h up to 9,000 metres. Lithuania's 2026 defence budget is 4.79 billion euros with a weapons envelope of about 1.7 billion. This is a gap Lithuania must close on Lithuanian terms. Scope is the commercial-FPV component line at Granta-class prime level; portfolio sits with loitering-munition-production, motors with drone-motor-manufacturing, autonomy with offensive-drone-swarm. The recommended next step is a joint Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Economy study on line-rate targets, three-site dispersal under the 15 April 2026 RU Ministry of Defence list naming Vilnius, STT compliance, and labour feasibility against a 1.4-million industrial base. Final scale and vendor mix are for the government and Seimas.
The Problem
Russia's Shahed-class output at Yelabuga of 3,000 to 5,500 a month, and the Geran-3 jet variant cruising at 300 to 370 km/h up to 9,000 metres, drive a saturation-attack threat that needs both an FPV interceptor mass and an offensive FPV mass on the Lithuanian side. On 15 April 2026 the Russian Ministry of Defence published a 21-target European list that explicitly named Vilnius (pravda.com.ua, 16 April 2026; corroborated by UNITED24, Meduza, TASS), so any production-site footprint has to assume targeting from day one.
Granta Autonomy's verified output at the start of 2026 is several hundred FPV drones a month against a stated thousand-a-month target (Guoba, dronelife.com). There is no other domestic FPV prime at scale. Operator data from Ukraine (RUSI, 2025) puts the kill probability of an FPV drone in a heavy electronic-warfare environment at 0.20 to 0.30, which means a 700-euro drone produces a real cost-per-kill of about 2,333 to 3,500 euros — still 300 to 2,500 times cheaper than the targets it destroys, but an order of magnitude above the 700-euro headline that often circulates. The 23 September 2025 Šakalienė amendments authorise the military to engage airspace violations only; they are not a legal predicate for cross-border deep strike or production licensing (kam.lt; militarnyi.com).
Without action: Without a domestic component line at Granta-class scale, Lithuania imports drones at premium cost on backlogged Western lines and depends on Polish or Ukrainian producers whose first call is their own war. The April 2026 Lithuanian Cabinet procurement of 48 Merops AS-3 counter-drone systems, against the FY26 145-million-euro counter-drone envelope, addresses the defensive layer but not the strike-FPV magazine.
Lithuanian Context
Manning is the binding floor. At Ukrainian wartime productivity of about 25 FPV drones per worker per year, a 500,000-a-year line needs about 20,000 workers. Lithuania's industrial labour pool is roughly 1.4 million with defence sub-one-percent, so half-a-million-a-year is not reachable without Polish or Ukrainian co-production. A 50,000-a-month Granta-class line needs about 960 workers — achievable inside the existing defence labour base. The 15 April 2026 Russian Ministry of Defence target list naming Vilnius makes dispersal across at least three sites mandatory, with no site holding more than 30 percent of capacity. Special Investigation Service compliance, public lot tenders, and 90-day vendor re-vetting are required to avoid the procurement-integrity pattern flagged in the Anušauskas-era investigations. Lithuania is absent from Macron's Île Longue partner list of 2 March 2026 (absent, not explicitly excluded) and is not a party to the Polish-French Treaty of Nancy (signed 9 May 2025), so European funding pull runs through EDIRPA, PESCO loitering-munition strands, and the SAFE envelope (a loan, not a grant).