Lithuania doubles down on HIMARS with second battery purchase

Lithuania is buying a second HIMARS battery, expanding a procurement agreement with the United States that now covers additional launchers, munitions, training, and logistics support — and pushing the combined value of both batteries to approximately $778 million.

The Lithuanian Ministry of National Defense and the U.S. Defense Resources Agency signed the contract amendment covering the second High Mobility Artillery Rocket System battery, with Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas framing the acquisition in terms that leave little room for ambiguity about its purpose: “HIMARS is an American mobile artillery system proven in the war in Ukraine, used by 14 NATO and other partner nations. U.S. allies have committed to delivering the first battery still this year, but we are investing in the future and further strengthening the country’s defensibility, deterrence of the enemy, and our ability to defend together with allies on the Eastern flank.”

The second battery package includes additional launchers with combat and training munitions — sets of guided rockets of different types and combat characteristics — along with command and communications equipment and a logistics maintenance and training package. The munitions component covering different rocket types reflects HIMARS’s core operational advantage: the same launcher accepts multiple rocket and missile variants, allowing operators to engage targets ranging from enemy artillery and air defense systems to logistics nodes and command posts with different warheads and ranges from a single platform.

Lockheed Martin will implement the contract. The original agreement for the first battery was signed in 2022 through the Defense Resources Agency and covered launchers with combat and training munitions, maintenance and training equipment, personnel training, and services for integrating the systems into NATO’s long-range rocket defense network. The combined value of both batteries — first and second — now stands at approximately $778 million.

HIMARS has earned its reputation in the most demanding testing environment available: actual combat. The system’s performance in Ukraine, where it has been used to strike Russian ammunition depots, command posts, and logistics infrastructure at ranges that Russian artillery could not counter effectively, transformed it from a well-regarded but lightly deployed system into one of the most sought-after artillery platforms in the world. The waiting lists for HIMARS among NATO members and partners grew considerably as the war’s early phases demonstrated what precision long-range rocket artillery could do to a conventionally superior adversary’s operational depth. Lithuania’s decision to expand from one battery to two reflects that lesson absorbed and acted upon.

The geographic context makes Lithuania’s HIMARS investment particularly significant. Lithuania sits between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad — a strategic position on NATO’s Eastern flank that gives it less strategic depth than almost any other alliance member. The Suwalki Gap, the narrow land corridor connecting Poland to Lithuania that separates Belarus from Kaliningrad, is one of NATO’s most analyzed and most vulnerable geographic features. Long-range precision rocket artillery that can strike targets across the depth of that corridor — including logistics, reinforcement routes, and air defense systems on the other side of the border — is not a peripheral capability for Lithuanian defense planning. It is central to it.

Over the past three years, Lithuania has purchased approximately two billion euros worth of American weapons and equipment, making it the largest U.S. arms purchaser among the Baltic states. The inventory includes Javelin anti-tank missile systems, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, Black Hawk helicopters, HIMARS, and AMRAAM missiles for the NASAMS medium-range air defense system. That combination — anti-tank, protected mobility, attack aviation, long-range rocket artillery, and layered air defense — describes a force being built for peer conflict rather than symbolic deterrence.

HIMARS is compatible with other technologies already in use by the Lithuanian Armed Forces, which the Defense Ministry notes will ease integration into existing defense plans. That compatibility matters for a small military that cannot afford the operational friction of equipment that requires separate logistics chains, separate training pipelines, and separate maintenance ecosystems for every platform in the inventory. A HIMARS battery that integrates cleanly into Lithuania’s existing C2 architecture and logistics network multiplies its value relative to a system that requires a separate support structure to function.