When Lithuanian children head back to school in September, they will be studying more than math and history – they’ll be learning how to build and use drones.
The country’s defence ministry is launching a drone control and construction skills project that includes training the general public and children from grades 3 to 12 how to build and operate drones.
Nine training centres will be up and running by 2028, but the first three centres will be ready by September, the department said in a statement this week.
“[Drones] are now an integral part not only of science and industry, but also of everyday life,” Valdas Jankauskas, director of the Lithuanian Non-Formal Education Agency (LINEŠA), said in a statement.
The project will give younger generations “the opportunity to get to know this field from an early age,” which the ministry hopes will eventually be valuable for “both future engineers and for every civically active person”.
The news comes as the Baltic country reconsiders its border defences. Last month, an unmanned Russian drone carrying explosives flew into Lithuania from Belarus before crashing near a military training base, prompting officials to seek additional NATO support amid what they said was an “an alarming sign of the spillover of Russia's aggression”.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Andrius Kubilius, Lithuania’s former prime minister and the European Union’s Commissioner for Defence and Space, told local media that the country’s preparedness to respond to a drone strike is “not at the level we should have”.t”.
He added that Lithuania needs to be “prepared to defend ourselves against … hundreds of thousands of drones”.
Other Baltic countries have drone education programmes
Lithuania’s goal is to have more than 22,000 people, including 7,000 children, by 2028 that have “drone control skills,” like knowing how to pilot and build drones.
Beginning around age 9, the youngest students will learn how to build drones through “practical experiments and games,” the department said.
The skills are furthered in lower secondary school for children ages 11 to 16, where they will start to pilot first-person drones indoors and build them.
By high school, students will be designing and manufacturing 3D drone parts and participating in regional and national competitions, according to the plan.
With the new programme, Lithuania is joining its neighbours in creating drone training initiatives for children.
The Estonian government promised a drone education program by mid-2026 as part of its coalition agreement earlier this year. The deal offers few details about the courses, but it said all participating schools will get their own “drone kits”.
The program will be part of Estonia’s national defence curriculum, which was put in place in 2023 to “develop civic awareness and readiness to defend Estonia,” the government said.
Meanwhile, Latvia hosted its first drone operator camp in July. It trained 32 young cadets in flight fundamentals and electronic warfare, local media reported.
All three countries are also building a “drone wall” on their eastern borders with Russia.
The Estonian government said that includes building an “initial drone detection” system on the border and in four major cities by early 2027.
