U.S. Army tanks return to Lithuania months after pullout

A U.S. Army heavy battalion equipped with M1 Abrams tanks and an engineer battalion will deploy to Lithuania, the country’s Defense Ministry said Thursday, ending a gap of several months without a U.S. rotational force in the Baltic state.

Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said both battalions will arrive at the end of October. The force will total about 1,000 soldiers, matching earlier rotations, and will stay for nine months before the next unit takes over.

A heavy battalion is built around tanks and armored vehicles that can move quickly and fight under armor. Army engineer units build defensive positions and obstacles, bridge rivers and clear mines. Kaunas said the engineer battalion will help build up Lithuania’s army division and work on border protection and defensive projects.

Lithuania is forming its own national division, and together with Latvia and Estonia it is fortifying its eastern borders under a joint project the three governments call the Baltic Defense Line.

U.S. heavy battalions have rotated through Lithuania since 2019, after several years in which Washington kept only a few hundred troops there following Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014. The battalions were based at the training area in Pabradė, near the Belarusian border, and brought Abrams tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers.

In May, the U.S. Department of War announced a rebalancing of forces in Europe. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered the withdrawal of up to 5,000 troops from Germany and canceled the deployment of a Fort Hood, Texas-based armored brigade to Poland.

The Lithuania battalion is normally drawn from that Poland-based brigade. About 1,000 American soldiers left Lithuania in June with no replacement, leaving the country without a U.S. armored battalion for the first time since 2020. Estonia also saw its American presence shrink sharply.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said on Tuesday that a new rotation was already on its way and thanked President Donald Trump for the decision. His office said the force would be no smaller than earlier deployments.

U.S. Army officials in Europe told Stars and Stripes the move was part of a planned rotation announced in August, when the service said a brigade from the 1st Infantry Division would head to Europe to replace another brigade finishing its tour. The Department of War had not publicly confirmed the Lithuania deployment as of Tuesday.

Kaunas visited the Pentagon on Wednesday and said he proposed that Washington consider a permanent U.S. military base in Lithuania. He said no decision has been made and that talks on the idea will continue.

Lithuania borders Belarus, a close Russian ally, and Kaliningrad, a Russian territory on the Baltic Sea separated from the rest of Russia. The strip of Polish and Lithuanian land between the two, known as the Suwałki Gap, is the only land route connecting the Baltic states with the rest of NATO.

Germany is permanently stationing an armored brigade of about 5,000 troops in Lithuania, its first such deployment abroad since World War II, with full strength planned for 2027. The U.S. battalions, by contrast, rotate in and out every nine months.

On Sept. 15, allied fighter jets shot down a drone over Lithuania that was believed to be of Russian origin. Poland reinforced security along its border last week after Russian drone strikes near its crossings, and President Trump said Washington and Warsaw were making progress toward a new U.S. Army base in Poland.