To ensure protection of the eastern border it is necessary to reform at least two National Guard battalions into full-time units, wrote co-founder of CIREN, former state secretary to the Ministry of Defence Jānis Garisons on Facebook.
In his comment, Garisons referenced the incident that took place in September, when a Russian drone crashed in Rēzekne. He mentioned that, after meeting with different people, especially from outside Riga, he concluded that this incident has seriously damaged people’s belief in the capabilities of Latvian National Armed Forces (NBS) and NATO.
Garisons agrees that it is necessary to compose rapid response units in Latgale in order to quickly deal with various situations and intercept drones. LETA reported last week that battle groups of Air Forces have been stationed in Latgale armed with anti-air missiles.
At the same time, Garisons believes that aside from RBS-70 anti-air arms, it is necessary to procure more mobile weapons – shoulder-mounted Stinger missile systems or Polish Pjorn. Additionally, he believes it is necessary to station mobile bigger calibre machine guns to make it possible to quickly reach locations in danger and intercept perpetrators.
Staff remains the biggest challenge in putting together an effective system, admits Garisons. He emphasizes that investment in equipment alone is not enough, as full-time units and soldiers are needed in the border area to provide on-call duty and 24/7 response. “National Guard and existing staff would not be enough in this case,” believes Garisons.
Looking at potential threats in the future, he allows that border protection will be the main objective.
According to him, the question is whether efficiency could go up if border protection is entrusted to a single force – the National Armed Forces.
To do this, according to Garisons, at least two border battalions of the National Guard should be reformed as two full-time units armed with reinforced anti-air capabilities. “The only way to do this is speeding up the increase of the number of draftees,” stresses Garisons.
Also, for investments in counter-mobility and fortification of the border to be effective, there must be at least one full-time engineering battalion in the border area capable of deploying and maintaining all planned anti-mobility barriers in an expeditious manner, added Garisons.
“Otherwise we might end up as Russians in Kursk, where you have dragon’s teeth, but they aren’t defended and there are no mines,” he said.
In general, when trying to analyse the incident with the Russian drone, he feels that Latvia already has enough capabilities to face such threats. At the same time, this case should be used to improve them.