On the morning of October 3 Lithuania scrambled NATO fighter jets, issued an air-danger warning and temporarily closed the controlled airspace over Vilnius. The reason: radar had picked up an unidentified object moving from the direction of Belarus. Residents of the Vilnius district and the Ukmergė area received a message on their mobile phones to be ready to seek shelter.

The head of Lithuania's National Crisis Management Centre, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, said the parameters of the radar return resembled a drone, but that this could not be confirmed at that moment. "An object that could pose a danger and was approaching the Lithuanian border was registered on our radars. An air defence mission was activated and fighters were scrambled to identify the target," he said.

The fighters arrived, the object was gone

At around 10:15, three planes flying to the Lithuanian capital were circling over Dzūkija, and a Polish LOT plane from Warsaw was diverted to Kaunas. NATO fighters went to where the radar had last seen the object. They found nothing. At around 10:30 the military lifted the alert and lowered the warning level from "yellow" back to "white". "The fighters did not register any object in that area," the Lithuanian military said, and an air force helicopter was to inspect the spot where the signal disappeared. Vilnius airport then resumed normal operations.

The authorities did not rule out even the most banal possibility: that the radar had picked up a flock of birds. Vitkauskas said there had been similar cases before. A smugglers' weather balloon was judged less likely because of the wind direction. Citizens reported seeing or hearing something moving towards Jonava, but that information, Vitkauskas stressed, did not come from radars, only from people on the ground.

Why nobody takes chances

The nerves have a basis. Less than three weeks earlier, on the night of September 14 to 15, a drone from the direction of Belarus really did fly into Lithuanian airspace and was shot down with a missile by Italian Eurofighters on a NATO mission. Lithuanian authorities later said the craft was carrying explosives, and President Gitanas Nausėda said it was a Russian "Gerbera"-type drone, intended for an attack on Ukraine, that had veered off course.

This is what daily life looks like on NATO's eastern flank: one dot on the radar is enough for fighters in the air, a closed airport and a shelter message on your phone. Better birds than explosives. But how many times can a society hear the siren before people stop taking it seriously?