Nearly 10 thousand tactical vests worth of EUR 18 million has been acquired for the needs of the Lithuanian Armed Forces. The first shipment of the purchase has already been delivered to Lithuanian Armed Forces warehouses in Šiauliai. It is expected to be delivered completely by mid-September this year. The gear will be distributed to units in accordance the Lithuanian Armed Forces priorities. Manufactured by Germany’s Mehler Vario System GmbH, the tactical vests are ergonomic, convenient to wear, and integrates with other items in individual gear and clotting. It provides chest, back, side and vital organ protections against firearm and fragment damage on combat tasks.
The NATO Support and Procurement Agency will soon open another procedure to acquire a little over 16 thousand tactical vets. The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (Agence OTAN de soutien et d’acquisition, NSPA), abbreviated to NSPA, is the main logistics and procurement agency of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and is the executive branch of the NATO Support and Procurement Organisation (NSPO), formerly NATO Maintenance and Supply Organization (NAMSO). Until 2012, the tasks were organised with the NATO Supply Agency and other institutions. It has about 1200 employees in Luxembourg, France, Italy and Hungary.
A sample vest was tested and approved by Lithuanian Land Forces servicemembers before the order was placed. The purchase was deemed to match the requirements and level of ballistic impact protection expected in tactical vests. The acquisition was carried out by the Defence Materiel Agency under the MoD via the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA). The acquisitions processed via NSPA that reflect the requirement of multiple countries and are large in scale, are more efficient. Ensuring standard individual gear supply is one of the MoD priorities. The target is to ensure all military personnel of the Lithuanian Armed Forces have all main battlefield necessities and gear that maximizes battlefield survival by 2025.
