The Latvian army plans to deploy special mobile teams to destroy drones along the 400 kilometer long border with Russia and Belarus within the next two weeks. This is how Riga reacts to the serious security situation of the past weeks, when several drones entered its airspace.
Latvia will strengthen its anti-drone defense on the borders with Russia and Belarus. This is in response to several drones that have entered the country’s airspace in recent weeks.
- Latvia will significantly strengthen anti-drone defenses on the borders with Russia and Belarus.
- In the next two weeks, special teams will be deployed to destroy the drones.
- Teams in all-terrain vehicles will use attack drones with a range of ten kilometers.
- The exact number of patrols at the border remains secret for security reasons.
The number of patrols is secret
“Within the next two weeks, we plan to deploy teams to destroy the drones,” Modris Kairiss, head of the Latvian Army’s autonomous systems center, told Reuters. These teams will consist of up to four soldiers in an all-terrain vehicle who will operate attack drones capable of destroying approaching military drones within a 10 kilometer radius.
The number of such patrols, which guard Latvia’s 400-kilometer-long border with Russia and its ally Belarus, is kept secret.
“We really need to increase the number of these patrols, but we have to weigh it against the other needs of the military. If we deployed them on every kilometer of the border, we would quickly exhaust all resources,” admitted Kairiss.
Drone incidents
Since March, several stray Ukrainian drones have already flown into the airspace of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which border Russia and Belarus. Kiev claims that their target was military facilities in Russia, but their path was disrupted by Russian jammers.
Some of these drones have crashed and exploded, including two that crashed into an oil storage facility in Latvia on May 7 and caused a fire. The incident caused a political crisis, as a result of which the Minister of Defense Andris Spruds resigned, followed by Prime Minister Evika Siliňová.
