Estonian Defence Forces To Get €818m Worth Weapons, Ammo Over Four Years

Estonian Defense Forces will receive €818 million of the existing defence budget for the next four years to buy new weapon systems and other equipment that include new sidearms, unmanned aircraft, and long-range anti-tank systems.

The Defence Forces' tender budget for the next four years is €818 million. This will cover ammunition for all of the forces’ weapons, a complete exchange of sidearms, unmanned aircraft, and long-range anti-tank missile systems, Estonian public broadcaster err reported Thursday.

“The Defence Forces would invest in the Javelin system, and with it get long-range weapons, after they had recently run a tender for third-generation anti-tank systems".

"The defence budget will stay 2% in 2017-2020 but a large part of it – 818 million, which is 40 per cent of the budget – will be invested into new weapons and ammunition," Artur Jugaste, Deputy Director of Stratcom, Estonian Ministry of Defence said in an email statement to defenseworld.net Friday.

The Information Board gets more funding as well. Scoutspataljon will get combat as well as support machinery, the first of which will arrive in autumn this year. Work on most of the tenders will begin next year,” Defence Minister Hannes Hanso was quoted as saying by the news daily.

Hanso didn’t specify whether the equipment they were going to buy would be mainly new, or if once again used systems would have to do.

“Of course we want to equip our Defence Forces with the most modern and most up-to-date, but the tax payers have to keep in mind that everything has financial limits,” Hanso said.

Asked if for instance the new sidearms could come out of an ally’s depot, like Swedish weapons were bought years ago when the Swedes changed calibers, the Defence Minister said it was too early to say. He did point out that the Defence Forces would prefer a larger caliber.

“The general tendency is to move towards 7.62, but that depends on our cooperation with the Defence Forces,” Hanno said.

€818m over the next four years amounts to 40% of the Estonian defense budget.