In the predawn hours of a Tuesday in September 2026, NATO fighter jets destroyed a drone that had crossed into Lithuanian airspace, with preliminary evidence pointing to Belarus as its origin. The incident is not an isolated event but part of a recurring pattern along NATO's eastern frontier — a slow drumbeat of aerial incursions that has grown louder since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. For Lithuania, a nation bordered by both Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, each interception is at once a demonstration of alliance solidarity and a measure of how close the edge of o