Lithuania wants to teach kids how to fly drones to counter Russian threats

The Lithuanian government plans to open nine drone training centers across the nation to teach more than 22,000 people — including children as young as eight years old — how to build and fly drones to counter any future threats from Russia.

Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė touted the plan as a way to bolster the NATO member nation’s security in the face of Russian aggression against Eastern Europe, where drone warfare has become the standout method of attack and defense in the modern era.

“We plan that 15,500 adults and 7,000 children will acquire drone control skills by 2028,” Šakalienė said in a statement.

Government officials noted that the program will be adapted to different age groups, which begins at the third- and fourth-grade level where students will learn to build and pilot simple drones.

High school students will be tasked with learning the full design and manufacturing process of the drone parts as they learn how to fly the FPV drones, the same type as the ones used along the frontlines in Ukraine.

The plan to “expand civil resistance training” is estimated to cost nearly $4 million as Lithuania invests in advanced “first-person view” (FPV) drones and a mobile app to oversee the training.

Šakalienė said that by September, three drone training centers will open in Jonava, Tauragė and Kėdainiai, with six other facilities set to be rolled out in the next three years.

Drones have proven themselves to be the most critical tool for both Ukraine and Russia during the war, which has raged on for more than three years.

Moscow has used the UAVs to mount escalating assaults on Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky touting the same technology for allowing Kyiv to strike deep within Russia.

Last month, Russian media celebrated the rollout of what Moscow dubbed the “world’s biggest drone factory,” which saw teens as young as 14 working on an assembly line to construct the Kremlin’s killer drones.

Like the other Baltic nations, Lithuania has become increasingly worried about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with many NATO member states preparing for the worst.

Both Finland and Sweden have called on their residents to prepare for the possibility of war, issuing new guidance last fall on what to do if a conflict with Russia were to break out.

Moscow, in turn, warned that the two nations — which joined NATO in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — were viable nuclear targets in the event of war.

Tensions soared higher following reports in April that the Kremlin expanded its military bases located just 100 miles from the Finnish border.

With Post wires