Pilots of the “Sharp Kartuza” division of FPV kamikaze drones put together drones for a fight flight on Might 16, 2024 within the Kharkiv area, 8 km from the border with Russia.
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Six NATO international locations neighboring Russia are becoming a member of forces to construct a “drone wall” to guard their borders, Lithuania’s inside minister introduced on Friday.
“It is a fully new factor, a drone wall stretching from Norway to Poland, and the objective is to make use of drones and different applied sciences to guard our borders,” Lithuanian Inside Minister Agne Bilotaite stated in an interview with native information company BNS.
“Not solely with bodily infrastructure, surveillance methods, but additionally with drones and different applied sciences, which might enable us to guard in opposition to provocations from unfriendly international locations and to forestall smuggling,” she stated.
The opposite states participating are Lithuania’s Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia, in addition to Poland, Finland, and Norway.
Particulars corresponding to funding, timeline and technical facets of the undertaking weren’t offered, however Bilotaite stated EU funds may play a task and that every nation needed to do its “homework.”
In an interview with Finnish tv channel Yle, cited by the Monetary Occasions, Finland’s Inside Minister Mari Rantanen stated that the drone wall plan would “enhance in time.”
Finland, which joined NATO in 2023, shares an 832-mile border with Russia.
The inside ministers of the six international locations participating within the drone wall undertaking met within the Latvian capital of Riga on Might 23 and 24. They mentioned safety threats in addition to the problem of non-military techniques corresponding to “instrumentalized migration”, citing previous situations the place Russia or Belarus despatched plenty of undocumented asylum seekers from Africa and the Center East over their borders.
“Our objective is to make sure that Finland has efficient means to deal with conditions the place instrumentalized migration is used to place stress on Finland,” Rantanen stated in an announcement throughout the occasion.
“The phenomenon of instrumentalized migration on the EU’s exterior borders is a typical problem for our international locations. Finland additionally goals to seek out EU-level options to fight this phenomenon.”
