The war in Ukraine, with its trenches and suicide drones, continues to reverberate in the region and throughout the world. In the last issue of The Relay, Tom Jennings noted the U.S. Army’s current efforts to defeat enemy drones—and what these efforts would require, beyond sensors and effectors. But, obviously, it’s not just the U.S. military that’s concerned about enemy unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
Lithuanian Calls on NATO
Reuters is reporting that Lithuania has asked NATO for help defending its national air space after “two military drones crossed into its territory from Belarus last month.” Both drones were Russian copies of the Shahed, a kamikaze UAS produced by Iran, and might have been intended for targets in Ukraine but got confused by that country’s air defenses.
Or so people say.
Whatever the case, Lithuania is, in the words of Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys, the “eastern NATO flank.” As such, NATO has an obligation to address the Russian UAS threat—to which the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) has responded that the alliance is busy “procuring and developing detection and counter-drone capabilities.”
Digging in for Defense
As it waits for that NATO aid to arrive, Lithuania is also building a three-layered defensive line “composed in part of anti-tank obstacles, drainage ditches, minefields and more,” reports Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo in Defense News.
The new defense line will be 50 kilometers deep. This includes the first five miles of mines, tank ditches and other obstacles, followed by 15 kilometers “drainage ditches, engineer equipment parks, bridges prepared for demolition and blocked bridgeheads.”
After that, there would be more roadside trees ready to be felled and bridges to be demolished.
Thoughts on Lithuania
The idea of building a wide and layered defensive line along your national border is direct lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, the Russians just rolled across the border like water. It was all very brute force. But I doubt it would have been successful had Ukraine had something like the Lithuanians are developing now.
Of course, for the Lithuanian defense zone to be effective, it will have to have air defense systems at its outer perimeter (hence the call to NATO) and be covered in unattended sensors. Those sensors could be electro-optical, infrared, seismic, electromagnetic, etc. The idea is to deploy a variety of sensors, and a great many of them, because having all your people in trenches isn’t going to work.
Of course, you’ll then need a communications network to link all those systems.
A major challenge in doing so is line of sight. If you look at the region, you’ll see that it is covered with pine trees. That’s a very difficult terrain for RF propagation. To overcome that natural obstacle, a defender will need a high–density layout of networking nodes to push sensor signals back to command. That, in turn, requires a highly scalable network.
You’ll also need elevation.
Static towers are fine in peacetime, but in wartime, they are easy targets. So, you’ll need to put network antennas on mobile mast systems with long telescoping arms to get over the tree line. You can also use rapid-deploy tethered aerostats and have them floating 400 meters off the ground. Plus, you can relay signals with drones.
Finally, PACE (primary, alternate, contingency and emergency) communications should be your byword. You should have a non-line-of-sight networking capability that leverages satellite terminals and 5G. And if it were my choice, I’d employ two separate RF bands. Basically, networking a Lithuanian-type defensive zone is a serious endeavor, but from my experience both in the Baltics and in the United States, I think it can be done.
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Tom Hanlon is the Director of Business Development, International at Persistent Systems, LLC, a leading defense tech company providing mobile ad hoc networking solutions to the military, first responder, government, and commercial markets.
