ARRC JOURNAL
STRENGTHENING THE ALLIANCE:
ENGAGEMENT WITH ESTONIAN
DEFENCE FORCES
Lieutenant Colonel Mikk Pukk, Estonian Land Forces
In recent years the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) has undertaken a number of
capacity building activities in support of wider NATO and UK defence engagement.
The Baltics remain a keen area of focus for the ARRC and the establishment of the UK
enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) battlegroup in Estonia has served to focus UK and
ARRC attention to developing greater working relationships with the Estonian Defence
Force (EDF).
Following British Army and EDF talks in
2017, it was agreed that the ARRC would
support the development of the EDF
deployable headquarters in a capability
development programme to better
enable EDF headquarters integration
alongside NATO headquarters.
To understand the scale and the
implications of this programme it is
necessary to understand the context that
Estonia sits within. Estonia, a country in
northern Europe, borders the Baltic Sea
and the Gulf of Finland and includes
more than 1,500 islands covering a
total 45,227 square kilometres. It has a
population of 1.3 million inhabitants; for
The relationship
between the ARRC
and the EDF is based
on maintaining
the Estonian lead
in the activity
and supporting,
not leading, their
development
programme.
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ALLIED RAPID REACTION CORPS
scale this is approximately twice that of
Gloucestershire. Estonia’s neighbours
by sea are Finland, Denmark, Sweden,
Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and
Russia and it shares land borders
with Latvia and Russia. As recent
historical context is established through
observations of the activities of Russia
in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014,
Estonia can view many similarities of
the plight of these countries with its own
potential future. It is also a country that is
in conflict in terms of the large numbers
of cyber attacks, propaganda events
and witness to very large-scale military
exercises such as VOSTOK and ZAPAD
on its borders. It is no secret that the
cyber aggression and propaganda that
NATO and western democratic society
have been subjected to is felt even more
keenly in Estonia.
NATO equally considers Estonia to
be a focal point for activity with the
establishment of Air Policing, NATO
Forward Integration Units (NFIU) and
eFP battle groups in the region, as well as
associated enablers. Multinational Corps
Northeast (MNC-NE) and Multinational
Division Northeast (MND-NE) have also
been established and maintain over
watch of the area and they will soon
be joined by through establishment of
Multinational Division North (MND-N).
Estonia spends more than 2 per cent
of its GDP on its defence budget
and continually conducts training for
conscripts to produce reserves. The
EDF’s largest exercise in recent years
was Exercise HEDGEHOG 2018 where
the ARRC took the opportunity to train its
Operational Liaison and Reconnaissance
Team (ORLT) in close cooperation with
Estonian and Latvian NFIUs, MNC-NE,
and Estonian partners and enablers.
More recently the Estonian government
conducted political-level exercises on
2 November 2018, which culminated in
the call-up of a reserve battalion to full
deployment. These types of exercises
serve to highlight difficulties from strategic
level down to the sub-tactical, where the
‘strategic conscript’ may not arrive when
called up if the assembly area does not
have WiFi. The EDF headquarters deals
with all of the levels of command and the
associated issues in one headquarters
construct.
The ARRC and Estonia share a
common vision in the employment
of the NATO vision and, in particular,
Article III, which states, “In order to
more effectively achieve this Treaty, the
Parties, separately and jointly, by means
of continuous self-help and mutual aid,
will maintain and develop their individual
and collective capacity to resist armed
attack.”
Estonia understands the need to
reorganise its operational level of
command and control to counter existing