Lithuania’s first HIMARS roll off production line

Lithuania’s first HIMARS rocket artillery systems are coming off the production line, the Lithuanian Armed Forces announced, releasing the first images of the vehicles and confirming delivery is expected within the coming years.

“The first Lithuanian HIMARS are rolling off the production line — this is what they will look like,” the Lithuanian Armed Forces posted on X. “Although these rocket artillery systems are still in production, we expect to receive the first ones within the coming years. With them, our reach will extend even further.”

HIMARS is a wheeled, highly mobile rocket artillery system built by Lockheed Martin on a Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles truck chassis. It fires GPS-guided rockets and missiles from a single pod containing six GMLRS rockets or one ATACMS ballistic missile, with a crew of three and the ability to shoot and move within minutes of firing, a capability that has proven decisive in Ukraine, where HIMARS strikes on Russian ammunition depots and command nodes repeatedly disrupted Russian operational planning from 2022 onward. For a small Baltic nation sharing a border with Belarus and a narrow land corridor, the Suwalki Gap, connecting it to Poland and the rest of NATO, long-range precision fires aren’t an abstract deterrence investment. They’re the capability that lets a small force reach deep into an adversary’s logistics and command architecture before that adversary can mass forces for an attack.

Lithuania procured its HIMARS systems from Lockheed Martin as part of a broader defense buildup that also carries an industrial dimension. Gaylia Campbell, vice president for tactical weapons at Lockheed Martin, framed the relationship as more than a weapons sale. “Our partnership with Lithuania marks a new phase of cooperation that goes beyond simply supplying world-class weapons systems,” Campbell said. “By exploring joint industrial opportunities, we are expanding Lockheed Martin’s global supplier and partner network – this approach is exactly what is needed to meet the growing demand for our combat-proven capabilities both domestically and abroad,” she said. The agreement is expected to expand Lockheed Martin’s global supplier and partner network, with authorities describing continued cooperation as a path toward developing a more integrated and modern Lithuanian defense industry.

That industrial partnership framing reflects a shift in how NATO’s smaller members are approaching defense procurement. Buying weapons systems off the shelf from American primes was the model for decades — efficient, interoperable, and politically straightforward. What’s changed is the recognition that pure buyer-seller relationships leave smaller nations dependent on external supply chains that can be disrupted, delayed, or constrained by the competing priorities of a larger ally’s own procurement demands. Building domestic industrial participation into a major procurement — even at a modest level — creates local expertise, local employment, and local capacity to sustain and eventually produce defense equipment that would otherwise have to travel across an ocean during a crisis.

Lithuania has been among the most consistent and vocal advocates for NATO’s eastern flank defense, repeatedly pushing for greater allied presence on Baltic territory and investing heavily in its own defense spending. The country has committed to and exceeded NATO’s two percent of GDP defense spending benchmark, and its procurement choices have deliberately prioritized systems that are interoperable with allied forces and capable of contributing to collective defense rather than purely national territorial defense. HIMARS fits that model precisely — the same system that U.S. Army units operate, firing the same ammunition, guided by the same GPS architecture, with the same shoot-and-move doctrine that NATO partners have been learning alongside American forces for years.