Lithuania expands military training infrastructure

The Lithuanian armed forces’ Gaižiūnai and Pabradė training facilities are being expanded to meet increased training demand.

The Gaižiūnai training area will be expanded to 125 square kilometres from the current 52 square kilometres. It has a new 1,500m machine gun firing range with maintenance facilities for training on medium and large calibre machine-guns mounted on vehicles in stationary positions. It will also get new 300m and 1,000m qualification handgun firing ranges; range maintenance facilities; tactical vehicle maintenance facilities; and new storage buildings.

The Pabradė training area will be expanded to 176 square kilometres from the existing 85 square kilometres. New tactical fields for tank and infantry fighting vehicle fire training as well as firing ranges are being built. The main field has already been rearranged and expanded, and several firing positions and a target strip have been added.

The completion of the expansion project will enable soldiers to train manoeuvres of a battalion-sized battle group and live fire with infantry fighting vehicles and tanks, air support tasks and artillery units.

New barrack buildings to house 1,200 soldiers are also being built.

Work is scheduled to be completed by 2022 on both locations.