Executive Summary
Russia's planning assumption for a Baltic operation is speed: seize territory in 72-96 hours before NATO can reinforce through the Suwałki Gap. The single most cost-effective way to break that timeline is to ensure that every kilometer of advance costs officers lives, every road junction is a kill zone, every tree line conceals precision fire, and movement in daylight becomes operationally prohibitive across the entire country. This program builds that reality through three tiers: 4,000 designated marksmen making every Lithuanian squad lethal at 600m+ (the volume layer that transforms all infantry), 1,000 trained snipers providing company-and-above precision fire teams with 800-1,500m capability (the professional layer that Russia's planners must account for), and 3,000 civilian reserve precision shooters through Lithuania's 17,000-member Šaulių sąjunga and sport shooting community (the surge layer that makes Russian planning models break). Mobilization target: 5,000+ precision-capable personnel within 90 days. Finland built national deterrence on the principle that occupation must be unbearably costly — with 900,000 trained reservists, snipers in every infantry company, and designated marksmen in every squad. Lithuania, with 2.87 million people, cannot match Finland's scale but can match its principle: embed precision marksmanship so deeply into the defense system that any invasion faces precision fire everywhere, continuously, from a population that cannot be distinguished from its terrain until it is too late. Ukraine proved the concept under fire — building sniper capability from nearly zero in 2014 to brigade-level organic sniper companies across 130+ brigades, still facing shortage.
Transforms Lithuania's defense posture from a force that delays until NATO arrives to a force that makes every hour of occupation unbearably costly. Forces adversary to restrict all daylight movement, invest heavily in counter-sniper operations, accept officer casualties at every engagement, and fundamentally revise the 72-hour timeline assumption. Creates a deterrent that persists even if conventional forces are overwhelmed — armed, trained, dispersed precision shooters embedded in the population and terrain cannot be defeated by conventional maneuver alone.
In short: 1,000 trained snipers (from ~150); 4,000 designated marksmen equipped; 3,000 civilian reserve precision shooters; 5,000+ mobilization surge within 90 days; 800m+ average first-round hit across all formations; every squad with DMR, every company with sniper team; precision fire coverage across all critical terrain
The Problem
A Russian ground offensive against Lithuania would likely involve multiple battalion tactical groups pushing through the Suwałki Gap and along the Belarus-Lithuania border, supported by forces from the Kaliningrad exclave. Russian doctrine assumes 2-3 snipers per company as organic precision fire assets. In Ukraine, Russian snipers operate under cover of indirect fire, forcing defenders to expose positions, then engaging them — a tactic that inflicted roughly one-third of Ukrainian casualties during the Donbas positional warfare phase. Russian planning for the Baltic states assumes speed: seize key terrain before NATO's reinforcement timeline allows meaningful counterforce. Breaking that timeline requires imposing delay and attrition at every phase of advance — and precision fire is the single most efficient mechanism for doing so, particularly in Lithuania's forested and urbanized terrain.
Lithuania fields approximately 150 trained snipers across its armed forces. Designated marksmen with 600m+ capability are absent from most squads. Lithuania's total ground force structure — three brigades (Iron Wolf mechanized, Žemaitija motorized, Aukštaitija reserve), six KASP territorial battalions, plus the German 45th Panzer Brigade (arriving by 2027) — contains hundreds of companies and thousands of squads, nearly all of which lack organic precision fire capability beyond 300m. For comparison: Finland fields snipers in every infantry company command platoon and designated marksmen (tukiampuja) in every 9-person squad, backed by 900,000 trained reservists. Ukraine, despite building from near-zero to sniper companies across 130+ brigades, still faces a qualitative shortage. Lithuania's 17,000-member Šaulių sąjunga (Lithuanian Riflemen's Union) — a state-supported paramilitary organization under Ministry of Defence supervision — represents an untapped precision fire reserve: in wartime, its armed formations fall under Lithuanian Armed Forces command, yet no formalized sniper or designated marksman training pathway exists within the organization.
Without action: Without national-scale precision fire capability: Russia's 72-96 hour seizure timeline remains achievable because Lithuanian infantry cannot impose meaningful delay beyond direct-fire range (300m). Enemy forces move freely in daylight across Lithuanian territory. Artillery spotters, drone operators, and command personnel operate with impunity at 600-800m — the range gap where Lithuania has no answer. The psychological deterrent of precision fire — documented in Ukraine as forcing 30% reduction in enemy movement when sniper presence is merely suspected — is entirely absent from Lithuania's defensive posture. In weather conditions that ground small drones (frequent in Baltic climate: rain, wind, fog, winter), Lithuanian units lose their only precision engagement capability beyond rifle range. Most critically: Lithuania's defense concept depends on holding until NATO reinforcement. Every hour that cannot be bought with precision fire attrition is an hour that NATO's political decision cycle may not deliver.
Lithuanian Context
Lithuania's defense concept rests on three pillars: national forces hold initial ground, NATO reinforces through the Suwałki Gap, and total societal resistance makes occupation unsustainable. Precision fire capability directly strengthens all three pillars — it buys time for NATO (delay and attrition at every phase), it integrates with allied forces (NATO-standard calibers and doctrine), and it embeds resistance capability in the population (Šaulių sąjunga pathway). Lithuania's 17,000-member Šaulių sąjunga, organized into 10 territorial riflemen units aligned with Lithuania's counties, already provides the organizational framework for distributed precision fire. The Union's members include professionals from all fields — doctors, engineers, IT specialists — who in wartime fall under Armed Forces command. Adding a formalized precision marksmanship pathway transforms this existing structure into a deterrent that Russia's planners cannot model away. The Finnish precedent is direct: Finland's Suojeluskunta (Civil Guard) produced the marksmanship culture that made the Winter War's cost unsustainable for the Soviet Union. Lithuania's Šaulių sąjunga was historically modeled on exactly this Finnish institution — the parallel was explicit in the Union's founding ideology.
Lithuania's 65,301 km² of territory is approximately 30% forested with significant urbanization along key corridors. The terrain naturally channels any ground offensive through predictable routes: the Suwałki Gap (the 65km NATO land corridor between Poland and Lithuania), the Belarus-Lithuania border corridors, and approach routes from the Kaliningrad exclave. Each of these corridors passes through terrain ideal for precision fire: forests providing concealment, urban areas creating engagement opportunities, rivers and chokepoints forcing predictable movement. Defensive doctrine allows pre-registration of engagement zones at every critical junction. Baltic climate (frequent rain, wind, fog, sub-zero winter conditions) regularly grounds small drones for hours or days — making organic precision fire the only reliable engagement capability beyond 300m during these periods. Lithuania's small size (approximately 370km north-south, 370km east-west) means logistics for specialized ammunition and equipment are manageable from central distribution.