Lithuania To Increase Defense Spending To 6% of GDP

Lithuania plans to increase defense spending to 5-6% of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda announced this after a meeting of the State Defense Council, LRT reports.

Such resources for defense should be spent in the period of 2026-2030. This is necessary to accelerate the deployment of the mechanized division.

Nausėda said that “the possibility of Russian military aggression is still real, but it is not inevitable.”

“We need to significantly intensify our efforts to strengthen defense and deterrence and allocate more resources to this end,” the Lithuanian President said.

The Lithuanian broadcaster noted that after a meeting of the State Defense Council in October last year, it became known that the mechanized division would not be able to achieve full operational capability by 2030, as previously planned.

This is due to the high costs of purchasing expensive military equipment, in particular, modern Leopard 2 battle tanks and tracked infantry fighting vehicles, as well as the need to create the appropriate infrastructure in the country.

According to the Lithuanian president, if national defense funding is not increased and the situation in the defense industry remains unchanged, the division will not be combat-ready by 2036-2040.

Therefore, he stated that in order to form the division by the scheduled date, defense allocations should’ve reached 5.5% of GDP annually during the period.

Lithuania recently began considering the possibility of withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines. This is due to the need to strengthen national defense and deter possible aggression from Russia.

The future operators of Lithuanian M142 HIMARS rocket systems were trained in Germany in December.

By mid-2026, Lithuania will launch a plant for the production of 155 mm artillery ammunition by the German defense giant Rheinmetall.