NATO fighter jets have shot down an unidentified drone over central Lithuania shortly after midnight on September 15, the first time such an aircraft has been destroyed over the Baltic state’s territory. The engagement was logged at 1.19am local time.
The drone came down near the village of Pratkūnai, in the Kaišiadorys district of Kaunas county, Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre said. Nobody was injured and no damage was reported.
The Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence said Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons based at Šiauliai, in the north of the country, carried out the interception. The Italian detachment has held the alert since taking over NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission on July 31.
President Gitanas Nausėda confirmed the shoot-down on social media and thanked allied personnel for their response. “A drone that just entered Lithuanian airspace was destroyed by NATO fighter jets,” he said.
Minutes earlier the civil protection platform LT72, which is run by the interior ministry, had issued a yellow air alert covering Vilnius and the districts of Vilnius, Trakai, Elektrėnai and Kaunas. Residents were advised to identify a safe place in case the warning was raised to red.
The alert was lifted across all four districts within minutes of the defence ministry announcing that the drone had been neutralised.
Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the crisis management centre, told public broadcaster LRT that the site had been cordoned off and that teams were working to establish the drone’s type, its characteristics and its intended flight path.
The centre said the aircraft had most likely crossed in from Belarus, though its origin had not been established. The Lithuanian armed forces said they would draw no conclusions until the investigation was complete.
NATO sources said two Italian jets had been scrambled and that the operation was co-ordinated through the alliance’s Combined Air Operations Centre at Uedem in western Germany. Inquiries were continuing alongside the Lithuanian authorities.
The shoot-down was the latest incident along the eastern flank of NATO and the European Union since the start of the war in Ukraine. Alliance fighters have engaged stray aircraft over Estonia and Latvia this year, and in August a Spanish jet made the first drone kill of the Romanian air policing mission.
Lithuania recorded 22 smuggling drones in its airspace in the first 13 days of September, Vitkauskas said. Vilnius airport has been shut repeatedly since 2025 by balloons carrying contraband cigarettes launched from Belarus.
Earlier this month the country urged NATO to prepare a joint answer to Russian hybrid operations below the threshold of open war. The three Baltic presidents have asked for Baltic Air Policing to be converted into a full air defence mission with counter-drone capabilities.
