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The drone was shot down by Italian troops stationed at the NATO air base in Šiauliai using Eurofighter jets.

Military police, regular police and other emergency services were dispatched to the crash site, where they recovered debris overnight, the Lithuanian military said.

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Warnings of a possible air threat were initially sent to residents of Vilnius and the surrounding district, as well as the Trakai and Elektrėnai districts. The warning was later extended to the Kaunas region as the drone continued westward. The alerts were subsequently cancelled.

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[–] 1 point 15 hours ago* (1 child)

So you didn't do the math... Let's say we go with the 200k per interception of a drone (because there is more than just the spend missiles/fuel but also wear on the jet and a lot of work going into it for just a few hours of use). By above's cost for efficient gun-based systems those 200k get you about 20m of border covered. You would need 13,750 times that money just to cover the small Lithuanian border with Russia (pretending that flying object cannot jsut go around the direct route...).

Sure, you can spend some more money on developing lasers (in fact they do - because that's peanuts spend anyway compared to the actual production costs in numbers) to decrease the cost from ~1000€ for a salvo of smart air-burst ammunition to a fraction of that. Doesn't change the base calculation. It actually only gets worse if those guns are more expensive because of the high energy systems required for each.

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  • [–] 1 point 14 hours ago

    Good point, the limited range does make laser system more expensive for covering the border of a country.

    It probably make more sense to use laser systems as an extra layer of protection around specific strategic locations, ie transportation hub, large power stations, military bases, large city centers..

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