Anna Linford 
Lithuania is moving to end its decades-old status as a nuclear-weapons-free state, positioning itself as what a report from TVP World called the alliance's future "king of deterrence." At the same time the Baltic state is running mass-evacuation exercises for a possible Russian strike and has vowed to "fight back," according to GB News.
That gap hasn't closed — it's now visible in two separate corners of the industry.
Promises the industry hasn't kept
Leonardo pledged roughly €400 million in offsets — industrial work promised to Austrian firms in return for a defence deal — but most of it appears not to have materialised, according to an investigation by Defence Industry Europe.
Europe's push into space-based defence is hitting the same friction. Institutions are trying to speed up acquisition to match the security push, but procurement is still moving slowly, Via Satellite reported.
Testing Europe's 'idea of power'
The European Council on Foreign Relations argues the continent now has to define its own concept of power for an era with no settled rulebook — building alliances and defending its interests without the guardrails the postwar order once supplied.
Hypothesis: Lithuania's moves function as much as signalling — to Moscow, and to a sceptical Washington — as literal war preparation, precisely because the industrial base that would arm that resolve is still under construction. Supporting this: the same week Vilnius announced its shift, separate reporting showed both an offset deal and space-defence procurement lagging behind schedule. Against this: evacuation drills and a legal change on hosting nuclear weapons require no functioning arms industry to execute, so the industrial gap doesn't invalidate them — it just means Lithuania's resolve currently outpaces what allied factories can supply.
Watch whether Lithuania's parliament formally ends its nuclear-weapons-free status, and whether Austrian or EU officials force a public accounting of the Leonardo offset.
