Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

In recent decades, the importance of supply chain management has increased due to the frequency and severity of disruptions. The issue of supply chain resilience is widely discussed in the scientific literature. It should be noted that most studies focus on the functioning of commercial supply chains. Given the lack of a systematic approach to the specific threats and measures to ensure the resilience of military supply chains within the context of the Lithuanian Armed Forces (LAF), the objective of this article is to present the main findings of the research conducted to identify threats that are crucial for the supply chains important to the LAF and to outline measures that are taken to cope with the identified external threats.

This paper evaluates how the distance between air defence sensors and the command and control (C2) element influences fire-control effectiveness. Three deployment variants at 1, 7 and 20 km were assessed by means of operational analysis and the TOPSIS multi-criteria method using latency, connection reliability, situational awareness (SA), probability of kill (𝑃𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙), survivability and logistical complexity. The baseline model favours the short-distance configuration, but sensitivity analysis shows that greater emphasis on survivability shifts the optimum towards the medium-distance variant. A separation of approximately 5-10 km provides the most robust operational compromise for contemporary air defence employment.

Geographical distance between locations plays a crucial role in establishing healthcare accessibility in Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) models. In this article, we analyze three sets of distances: a straight-line distance and two network-based distances to determine how the distance calculation affects the models. We empirically examine the distances across several 2SFCA models and several input parameters. We find that the accessibilities derived from network-based distances correlate with each other, whereas the accessibility derived from straight-line distance does not correlate with them. The study is based on the data from the South Moravian region.

The changing security environment in Eastern Europe has increased the strategic importance of road infrastructure for national resilience, civilian protection, and allied military mobility. Lithuania occupies a critical position on NATO's north eastern flank, where a limited number of strategic road corridors simultaneously support domestic mobility, freight transport, civilian evacuation, and allied reinforcement. This study assesses the resilience of Lithuania's national road network under four military threat scenarios: blockade of the Suwałki Corridor and attacks from Kaliningrad Oblast, Belarusian territory, and the Latvian direction. The methodological framework combines structured evidence synthesis from public transport and infrastructure data, strategic and policy documents, and scientific literature with spatial road network assessment, scenario analysis, and multicriteria vulnerability scoring. The Scenario Severity Index identified the Belarusian scenario as the most severe, scoring 24 of 25 points and reaching 96 percent. The Suwałki Corridor and Kaliningrad scenarios each reached 80 percent, while the Latvian direction scenario reached 64 percent. The analysis identified A1, A5, the Vilnius to Kaunas axis, the Kaunas transport node, and strategic connections with Poland and Latvia as the most critical network elements. The findings show that simultaneous civilian evacuation and military movements may constrain road functionality even without direct infrastructure loss. Nationally coordinated corridor based resilience management and unified civil military traffic coordination are therefore required. The results also provide a structured vulnerability evidence base for the future development of the National Transport Mobilization Index.