Lithuania Moves NASAMS Onto the Approaches to Vilnius, Replacing RBS 70 — Third Battery Due 2028
Vilnius, 25 August 2026
Key points
- Lithuania has replaced the short-range RBS 70 batteries covering Vilnius's approaches with the medium-range NASAMS system
- General Raimundas Vaikšnoras: "As planned and promised, we have already replaced our short-range RBS 70 system with NASAMS, and today the approaches to Vilnius are being protected much more effectively and powerfully, with a greater range"
- Two NASAMS batteries are now in service; a third arrives in 2028
- Lithuania's last confirmed airspace incursion was in May; a fighter flying from Šiauliai shot down a drone over Latvian Balvi on 14 August
Lithuania has swapped the RBS 70 short-range batteries defending Vilnius's approaches for NASAMS, a medium-range system, with a third battery due in 2028 — an upgrade General Raimundas Vaikšnoras confirmed as "planned and promised".
The change is one of range rather than headcount: RBS 70 is a man-portable, line-of-sight weapon, while NASAMS pairs AMRAAM missiles with radar and a command network that holds a wider intercept envelope over the capital. Vaikšnoras framed the switch as scheduled, but it lands in a period when Baltic air defence has been tested repeatedly — Lithuania's own airspace was last violated in May, and on 14 August a NATO fighter operating out of Šiauliai shot down a drone over Latvian territory near Balvi. Two NASAMS batteries are operational now; the third, completing the planned set, is not due until 2028.
The two-year gap is the practical constraint. Signal No. 132 recorded the Balvi shoot-down as part of the same summer's incursion pattern; NASAMS replacing RBS 70 is the procurement-side answer to that pressure, hardening the approaches rather than the diplomacy. What the timeline exposes is a capital's air defence being completed in stages: two batteries now, the envelope the third completes not before 2028, and the interval covered by whatever the RBS 70 units withdrawn from Vilnius are redeployed to.
