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May 22 2025

OCCAR-EA Director Visits Lithuania Minister of National Defence and Visits BOXER Facilities

Vilnius and Rukla, Lithuania, 21/22 May 2025 – On 21 May, the OCCAR-EA Director, Mr. Joachim Sucker, met with the Lithuania Minister of National Defence Dovilė Šakalienė. During the meeting, the Minister shared her vision of Lithuanian defence strategy and exchanged views with the OCCAR-EA Director on how OCCAR could further support Lithuania, with a strong focus on increasing international interoperability and industrial cooperation.

As Lithuania is an existing participating nation in the OCCAR-EA BOXER Programme, the OCCAR-EA Director and the BOXER Programme Manager, Ms Alexandra Alonzi, additionally took the opportunity to discuss the current status of the BOXER Programme and to visit the ‘Iron Wolf’ Brigade in Rukla, Lithuania. The informative visit allowed the opportunity to interact directly with the users and to see the impressive maintenance and training facilities that have been developed, as well as experiencing the superior performance of the BOXER manoeuvring in the training area. 

Currently, OCCAR-EA is supporting Lithuania to progress outstanding topics for their BOXER Batch 1 fleet and in parallel is in the development phase of BOXER Batch 2, having signed the contract with ARTEC GmbH in October 2024. The OCCAR-EA Director and BOXER Programme Manager also visited Lithuania Defence Services, to broaden their understanding of the industrial set-up providing in-country logistical support for combat vehicles.